When patients visit your clinic, they’re giving you their trust. Moreover, they’re giving you their hope that things will look up for them someday. How do you meet them halfway?
Having the best physical therapy equipment certainly doesn’t hurt. The American medical industry is seeing fresh demand for better preventative care, particularly when it comes to chronic pain. Lower back pain remains the most common chronic issue, though hip pain and neck pain follow close behind. It’s often much better for patients to seek out therapy than surgery. Give them something to look forward to with physical therapy equipment that can hold up to the task.
Which functional assessment tools do you need? What changes is the industry going through? Let’s take a look at what you need to give your patients in 2020.
What Today’s Americans Need To Thrive
The average working American is nursing at least one, if not several, chronic issues. Not just that, but they’re even more stressed over student loan payments, mortgage, and credit card debt. These compounding issues can make recovery difficult at the best of times. Recent estimates have determined 30 million Americans to be experiencing lower back pain at any given time. It’s also the single leading cause of disability around the world.
Predictions For The Physical Therapy Industry
The demand for quality preventative care is reaching a fever peak in 2019. Americans need pain reduction to function, but they also need to build trusted relationships with their therapists to get there. Today there are around 200,000 physical therapists employed in the United States. US News and Money ranked physical therapy (as well as physical therapy assistants) in their top 10 for best healthcare jobs. Four out of 10 Americans, on average, will meet with a chiropractor before a doctor.
Functional Assessment Equipment For Diagnoses
Earning a patient’s trust takes a lot of time. This is best done with physical therapy tools that provide accurate readings of what they’re going through, where, and why. Testing equipment can take the form of physical and digital tools, best used in conjunction to provide the bigger picture. These should be paired with physical assessment software to store ongoing data. This can be accessed by assistants as well as doctors, all the better to provide a seamless experience for the patient.
Automatic Strength Tests For Further Detail
Chronic pain can affect an individual’s ability to interact with the world around them. It can even make simple tasks like lifting boxes downright impossible. Strength tests are useful for analyzing how they hold up to others in their age bracket. Today the total annual industry revenue for chiropractic treatment is $15 billion, which is the same amount Americans spend on pet supplies each year. Replacing a visit to the doctor with a visit to the chiropractor could save Medicare $85 million annually.
Physical Therapy Tools For Pain Reduction
After assessing where a patient’s pain comes from, you need to provide them with relief. This involves analyzing complex musculature, storing data for reference, and teaching basic day-to-day habits. These include (but aren’t limited to) exercise, stretching, and using adjustment tools. The back adjustment tool can help to align the spine more soundly, reducing stress on the surrounding muscles. While surgery can be helpful, it’s usually only required in extreme cases.
Physical therapy equipment is how you bridge the gap between patient and therapist. Do you have the tools needed to help Americans return to their lives confidently?