Telehealth Gives a Pediatric Physical Therapist a New Outlook on Care

Solo healthcare providers often have a variety of reasons for moving to a telehealth platform, ranging from patient convenience to a better work-life balance.

And while Sierra Christensen, PT, DPT, ATC, a pediatric physical therapist working in Texas, sees those benefits in her all-virtual practice, she also says the platform gives her a chance to be a better doctor – and to help the parents with which she works become better care providers themselves.

“it’s a mind shift where you, the practitioner, (are) able to see the value (in) doing things other than being hands-on,” she says, noting that a telehealth platform allows her to be more of a teacher and a coach. “It’s a lot easier to kind of allow yourself to expand your horizons, and you’re not just as good as your hands any more. You can share your knowledge.”

Christensen was a recent guest on Xtelligent Healthcare Media’s Healthcare Strategies podcast series, during which she explained that the shift to virtual care allows her to work as much with the parents as with her young patients, and to do that work in the comfort of their own homes. This gives her a chance to become a teacher as well as a caregiver.

That’s a change from when she started out in the healthcare field, travelling to schools, clinics and other locations to work with young children. Sometimes the parents would drop their kids off for a session and leave, not staying around to watch Christensen as she worked with the children.

“You can definitely see the impact,” she says of parents who don’t take part in the care management of their children, “and the outcomes are not as good as one would like.”

Christensen jumped on the connected health bandwagon with both feet, looking to spend more time at home with her two young children and to improve the care she gives to her patients, many affected by early development issues like torticollis and plagiocephaly.

She did all the research herself, both on the technology she could use and the reasons for moving to telehealth. She liked the idea of not having to build, buy or rent an office, and found a HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform that would allow her to do what she needs to do at home (she has a separate platform for secure e-mail and record-keeping).

At first blush, aside from giving Christensen more time with her kids, a telehealth platform gives her patients the opportunity to be at home, rather than on the road.

 “They don’t have to drive two and four hours to go to a clinic and do that multiple times a week,” she says. They also wouldn’t have to deal with waiting lists for clinic appointments, or have to take time off from work or seek babysitters for their other children.

The pediatric population – especially young children – “was pretty much a perfect fit for the telehealth model,” she says, because the home environment is an ideal place to deliver care. And “you’re using more of a coaching and teaching method than a hands-on (method), of course.”

Christensen notes that the transition from hands-on to virtual care did take some getting used to, but it was more of a challenge in understanding what pediatric physical therapy can do than what has been done in the past.

“You have to go back to your education and your knowledge base and really delve into why am I doing what I’m doing and how can I do that without physically being present,” she says.

And that’s where she sees the true value in this platform. She can teach parents “to be my hands … and deliver therapy to a child,” she says, but she can also teach them how to be better care providers, and to be invested in the care of their children – care that affects what she calls her “kiddos” long beyond their childhood.

Christensen also notes that the field is “a work in progress,” with little information or evidence on how to measure progress or effectiveness. This, in turn, gives her more of an opportunity to create her own standards for treatment and measures of success.

“You’re pretty much open to doing what you feel is right as a clinician,” she says, “which really is rewarding because you’re able to be super-creative.”

Listen to the full podcast to hear how Sierra Christensen launched and cultivated her telehealth platform. And don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.