A study is being carried out to evaluate the value of remote physiotherapy consultations during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) has commissioned a research team from the University of Manchester to undertake the evaluation as part of increasing our understanding of the delivery of remote physiotherapy consultations and rehabilitation in a wide range of settings.
Such remote consultations have proved popular during the weeks of lockdown when face-to-face consultations were out of the question.
It is hoped the findings “will provide a clear indication of which technologies are successful in different contexts, recommendations for successful implementation and examples of good service models”, the CSP said.
Dr Helen Hawley-Hague, a National Institute of Health Research research fellow within the university’s School of Health Sciences, will lead the project and said: “We will undertake a mixed methods real-world evaluation of the use of remote physiotherapy consultation and rehabilitation across the UK, which will enable us to use different methodologies to collect a range of different data.”
The study is set to start this month with a review of the existing evidence and then, during the autumn, a number of case studies will be developed looking at patients’ and physiotherapists’ experiences, the usability of technology, costs of service change and the benefits and challenges of remote consultations.
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The project is expected to finish in June 2021.
