1. General Virtual Care Questions
Telerehabilitation is a subdiscipline of telehealth and involves any rehabilitation delivered using telehealth technologies such as videoconferencing, sensors, chat/text, educational portals and more. The most recognizable form of telerehabilitation is the reproduction of the one on one physiotherapy via videoconferencing. The terms telehealth and telerehabilitation are slowly being replaced by the term ‘Virtual Care’.
With current technology and techniques, virtual care is most useful in situations where exercise, education, self-management instruction, and monitoring are the primary methods used to accomplish the therapeutic goals. With creativity, these forms of physiotherapy are fairly easily adaptable to the virtual environment. For example, virtual care for orthopaedic surgical recovery through progressive ROM, strength, functional exercises, self-mobilization, and education has been shown to be shown to achieve similar outcomes to physical visits.
Absolutely, when doing so is safe and in the interest of the patient. PABC has drafted a position statement on telerehabilitation (pending adoption) and CPTBC has provided various resources on the subject to support its use. A reminder that College regulation applies whenever physiotherapy services are provided, regardless of whether services are delivered in-person or via virtual care.
While most modern email systems are paying increasing attention to privacy and security, there are still risks in using email for patient communications. The Doctors of BC Doctors’ Technology Office has recommended the following statement for physicians to include on general emails to their patients and we recommended something similar be used.
DISCLAIMER: Please note, we cannot guarantee the confidentiality of information transmitted through e-mail. Please be aware of this limitation when communicating with us through email.
For virtual care invites, the following additional statement is recommended by the Doctors’ Technology Office:
DISCLAIMER: This virtual care visit, email invite and any attachment(s) is/are for authorized use by the intended recipient(s) only and must not be read, distributed, disclosed, used or copied by anyone else. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately, disconnect and delete any attachment(s). Patients may be redirected to the clinic for an in-person visit at any time if the concern is deemed not appropriate for virtual care. Thank you.
Treating a patient in another province is possible. To do so, the PT has to be licensed not only in their own home jurisdiction but also in the jurisdiction where the patient is located. See CPTBC bold text, first paragraph on this page.
Many jurisdictions have temporary or telehealth licenses for this purpose so a PT is not paying full registration fees for this:
- Visiting Physiotherapists application for Alberta
- College of Physiotherapy of Ontario - Cross-Border Physiotherapy
- College of Phycial Therapists of BC
If you are looking to apply to provide virtual care, are you already registered in another Canadian jurisdiction? If No – you are not eligible to apply. If Yes – please review the CAPR cross-border virtual care guidelines; contact registration@cptbc.org to discuss eligibility. And if the patient is in a non-Canadian jurisdiction, we are telling them to contact the regulator in that non-Canadian jurisdiction to inquire about necessary licensure.
