Re-think everything you thought you knew about physical therapy.
It doesn’t have to be in-person. It doesn’t have to be restricted to people with private insurance. It can be done anywhere. Thanks to a team led by Julie Fritz, PhD, PT, FAPTA, the College of Health is bringing expert PT care to patients in rural and underserved areas—and they don’t even need Internet access.
Funded by a grant from the NIH, the BeatPain Utah project connects patients with back pain to University of Utah physical therapists who specialize in pain management. Many of them live below the federal poverty level and in Utah, about half of them are primarily Spanish speaking. Half of the patients are also uninsured, while the others rely on Medicaid and Medicare, and they attend community health centers for their healthcare needs.
“It’s really a population where services like physical therapy aren’t accessible,” Fritz said. “If they are available, there are a lot of barriers to access, and medication is often the only option for pain management.”
Grant Funding Grants Free Treatment
Fritz received a grant to reduce opioid dependency in pain management and started BeatPain Utah. First, she and her team built relationships and partnerships with the community health clinics to start accessing patients. At the end of 2021, they began recruiting participants, and currently have worked with over 300 individuals across the state.
Once participants enroll, they’re paired with a physical therapist who helps them create a personalized plan to control and manage back pain. The costs of the sessions are covered by the grant, treatment can be provided in English and Spanish, and they are offered both online through 2-way video conferencing or over the phone.
“Physical therapists don’t usually see this type of individual,” Fritz said. “These are folks with erratic schedules, stressful lives, and housing instability. It’s gratifying to be able to listen and help them.”
Isaac Ford, PT, DPT, and Laura Vinci De Vanegas, PT, DPT, are two of the research physical therapists that provide interventions for BeatPain Utah. Ford is the lead and helps coordinate a team that includes De Vanegas and others.
“It’s been a paradigm shift in my practice,” Ford said. “I come from a manual therapy-based background to help resolve a patient’s pain. That’s not an option over telehealth—you’re providing interventions for patients to do on their own. Research is pointing to that as a solution, where the patients take charge of their own health.”
Personalized Plans to Beat Back Pain
De Vanegas conducts all her sessions in Spanish and noted the success rate of telehealth due to its flexible nature.
“We’re not bound by a video call, so I can talk to them on their lunch break or before their kids are up for the day,” she said. “There’s this increase to access that wasn’t there before. I’ve found that telehealth has helped more people use our services.”
In a typical appointment, the physical therapists discuss exercise prescriptions, sleep issues and stress resiliency and coping skills. But their recommendations are personalized to each patient, all with the goal of helping them reduce their back pain.
“A lot of our recommendations for managing pain aren’t prescriptive in nature,” De Vanegas said. “We’re collaborating with the patients and coaching them on goals that they feel are relevant to them.”
Although the physical therapists help to recruit participants for the study, they’ll work with anyone who wants the service, whether they want to join the study or not. It’s also collaborative, so the physical therapists send progress notes back to the providers at the community health centers.
To Utah and Beyond
Everyone on the team hopes to expand this service to other areas and populations. Over time, the BeatPain Utah project can prove that PT telehealth isn’t novel—it’s necessary.
“Since there are no geographical limitations with telehealth, it would be cool to see this grow,” Ford said. “Hopefully we can continue to get grant funding or get some funding from state or federal payers. There’s also a lot of discussion about whether telehealth should be a reimbursable service for insurance, so the more we can show it’s helpful, the more it’s likely to be covered.”
As project lead, Fritz wants to make sure the telehealth services don’t end once their grant funding ends. She hopes they can expand to work with more partner clinics so they can continue to open access to physical therapy, and eventually expand out to other chronic pain conditions.
“Small things can make a big impact on peoples’ lives,” she said. “We want to create a sustainable service for folks who need this kind of care and can’t use traditional services.”