Primary Care?

Firstly this is not an anti NHS post, I love the NHS. What we do is all about trying to help support our amazing colleagues and take some pressure off a neglected and crumbling system. In fact one of the stipulations for NHS physiotherapists who want to work with us, is that they do it alongside their NHS hours. We do this so that we don’t drain resources and make NHS waiting lists even longer. The idea behind The Physiotherapists is that for a lot of conditions, it’s about understanding what is wrong and then being given the information to manage it.  Currently the physiotherapy NHS waiting lists for East Sussex is 27 weeks for non urgent care. You probably think your pain and your need to manage it are urgent, so do we. 

Acute to Chronic

Self Efficacy is where we take responsibility for our own recovery, online physiotherapy heavily promotes this. Getting started as soon as possible is the key to a speedy recovery. Leaving things for a long time can see your condition move from acute to chronic. Chronic conditions can be stubborn and take much longer to treat. Of course some things will and do heal in their own time. I’m sure plenty of NHS appointments go unfulfilled as people forget to cancel it having recovered in their own time.  

When your condition is not getting better, the longer you leave it can have a big impact. Not just on the injury and pain but on things like your mental health. It can also impact on work and relationships and can leave you feeling depressed and helpless. 

Online physiotherapy is particularly suited to MSK conditions. As you can see from the picture; The waiting list for Sussex is up to 41 weeks in some areas such as shoulder pain. Remember that time is only after you’ve had a referral from your GP which itself might take you a few weeks to organise. 

Real Examples

Take for example a recent patient we had. Let’s call him Tom. Tom booked an appointment with us online, he had been suffering with pain in his elbow for several weeks and had spoken to his GP. Tom had been told it would be at least 14 weeks on the NHS waiting lists. He decided to take control of his recovery with us. 

During the appointment the physiotherapist asked Tom to describe the pain and go through the movements that reproduced it. They asked for details on the background to his injury and his lifestyle. From the information received the physiotherapist was able to diagnose ‘tennis elbow’.  From the diagnosis they were able to advise Tom what steps to take to start rehabilitating his arm.

Tom checked in once a week initially and now checks in once a fortnight for 30 minutes. Tendinopathies like tennis elbow can take a long time to heal but Tom is well on the road to recovery and it’s only been 6 weeks. If he had stayed in the system he would only be a third of the way through the waiting process. 

If Tom had found himself unable to work during this time due to his injury, the impact on his life could have been huge. Simply not being able to day to day activities has a big impact on our lives and those around us. 

Mental Health

A systematic review of the effects on mental health for patients waiting for MSK appointments by Deslauriers et al., 2019. Found that there was some evidence that the effects of waiting long periods had a detrimental effect on patients mental health. It also found that there was a negative impact financially as treatment that had been delayed would take longer. Working with patients in MSK it is anecdotally the case that many people are, if not depressed, certainly very fed up by the time they get to see someone. 

The next issue is the length of appointments and the pressure MSK Physiotherapists face. Typically a MSK NHS physio will see a patient every 20 to 30 minutes, they need to record notes in this time too! That means that you as a patient have limited time to get your point across, understand the diagnosis and then the treatment you are being advised to do. In a lot of cases (most in fact) that will be the only appointment you get. No follow up, just a black and white sheet of exercises you’ve seen how to do once. 

Resources

This is why we choose to make 45 minutes available for our initial assessments and 30 minutes for all subsequent appointments. We also leave 15 minutes between each physiotherapy appointment so that our physios can make decent notes. They can then allocate all your treatment plans to your patient portal.

Our patients can access their treatment plan at anytime, watch videos of how to perform a particular exercise and leave messages for their physio. 

We find that following this process gives our patients the best chance for recovery and they have a much better understanding of how to recover. 

Ethics

The joy of the NHS is that it provides free healthcare to all so why should you pay? Well if you can afford to, it gives you the opportunity to be seen faster. By freeing up your place, someone who cannot afford to pay moves up the queue. It doesn’t stop there though, The Physiotherapists do everything we can to be an ethical company for example:-  We’re carbon negative; we offset more carbon than we produce in the form of tree planting. Alongside this for every 100 hours of treatment we provide, we give away an hour to someone who otherwise couldn’t afford it. This helps level the playing field by providing the opportunity for those who can’t afford to pay to get the help they need. If you think we could help you or someone you know, have a look at our giving back page for more details. 

NHS Waiting Lists?

it’s time for you to skip that waiting list. Book your appointment today and get your recovery journey started.