Occupational Therapy Teletherapy and Other Related Services – Are You Interested?

Are you interested in setting up Occupational Therapy teletherapy or other related services? This week, I interviewed Beata Klarowska, M.S. CCC-SLP from TheraPlatform to find out how easy it is to set it up and start teletherapy.

Can you please provide a brief overview of how teletherapy is delivered to clients?

Occupational Therapy Teletherapy or other related services can be delivered via different electronic modes such as phone, secure chat or via secure video conferencing platform. The latter is the most popular among occupational therapists, speech and physical therapists as clinicians providing online therapy in these disciplines need to utilize digital or physical stimuli such as worksheets, handouts games, etc.

How tricky is the technology side of teletherapy?

Technology in teletherapy has improved over the past few years when it comes to video conferencing. Modern video conferencing platforms are often cloud based and can deliver high quality audio and video. However video conferencing platform is just one part of the equation when it comes to teletherapy.

Clinicians as well as their clients still need to meet two basic technical requirements: internet speed and stability of internet connection and processing speed of the machine. These two are important as they are the fuel of the video conferencing platform and help to process video, audio and all the teaching aids that clinicians share during online session.

And these are the tricky part of technology of teletherapy as not every single client of yours may have great Internet Speed or machine.

Is your software HIPAA and FERPA compliant?

Yes, TheraPlatform is HIPAA and FERPA compliant. We meet all their regulations and provide bank level security. We conduct yearly HIPAA risk analysis to ensure that we maintain compliance.

Can you provide an estimate of how long it takes, start to finish, to set up your teletherapy platform?

To set up your teletherapy platform alone, it would take about a minute. The other administrative set up such as preparing your consent, intake forms, templates, billing and organizing resources depends on how many forms and resources you need and how much do you need to customize them.  Most of our customers are up and running with the basic set up within an hour or less.

Can you conduct group occupational therapy teletherapy sessions or other related services?

Yes, you can conduct group therapy.

I see that your platform provides documentation as well. How does the documentation work?

Our documentation is very flexible. We offer built in consent, intake forms, and note templates. All of them can be modified to meet your needs and you can also build your own forms and templates from scratch using our form builder.

You can securely send consent and intake forms to your clients via our client portal so your clients can fill them out and sign with e-signature. Once they do, you will receive in system notification and these forms will be automatically saved in your clients’ charts.

In terms of documenting your therapy notes such as assessment and treatment plan or daily (progress notes), we offer four different workflows and if you conduct online therapy you can also take notes in session.

All documents are stored securely in cloud and can be uploaded and printed.

Can your platform be used for office visits too?

Yes, TheraPlatform is a practice management, EMR and teletherapy software and can be used for office visits as well.

What if I want to bill a family for private pay services?

Billing is also available on TheraPlatform. You can collect credit card payments, generate invoices and superbills. You can also request upfront payment so your tele-clients can pay for your service right in the virtual waiting room just before you start your session with them.

We also offer auto-billing so if you don’t wish to spend time managing invoicing, etc. TheraPlatform can do it all for you. The auto billing automatically generated an invoice after session, sends it over to clients and if you wish the credit card can also be automatically charged.

I like the whiteboard option for occupational therapy teletherapy. Can you explain how that works?

Thank you! This is also one of my favorite features on TheraPlatform because it is very open-ended function and can be used in so many different ways.

The whiteboard on our platform is interactive on both the clinician’s and the client’s end. It has a few tools such as the pen, the paintbrush, the eraser, the keyboard, and stickers, etc. Clinicians and clients can draw, paint, type on the whiteboard and move stickers around it. It can be utilized for so many different goals and help with explaining concepts, visual tracking, memory,etc.

TheraPlatform also allows clinicians to organize their own PDF resources (e.g. worksheets), YouTube videos, screen share online games, and our Pro Plus plan has interactive (on both ends) apps and fun games (e.g. dentist, puzzles, memory games, basketball, etc).

How I Did Setting Up Theraplatform On My Own

I decided to try and set up an account on Theraplatform this morning after reading about it here. In UNDER 15 minutes, I was up and running, got a consent form signed and started a session LIVE. And I didn’t even watch the training video!

It was super easy and I was even setting up two accounts at once – me as the provider and a user account for my daughter to see if it would all work properly. I didn’t test the split screen option but was able to use the Interactive Whiteboard easily.

I was able to write a chart note but needed to create a treatment plan to write an actual progress note. When I went to create the treatment plan the template was more geared toward pediatric mental health but there was enough information that you could add specific to your domain of OT, PT, or Speech.

As far as setting up teletherapy for occupational, physical or speech therapy, Theraplatform was super easy. It seriously makes me want to research more all the legal requirements in my state and others to see if I could deliver Physical Therapy services via teletherapy in my state.

They have a 30 day free trial so you can test it out right now if you want. And the paid monthly fee for an individual therapist is very reasonable. Even if you don’t provide teletherapy services, this service seems like it would be wonderful to have to communicate with parents in a HIPAA compliant environment instead of email or texting.

Find out More about Teletherapy

You can get all the details and the information about Theraplatform here.

Disclosure

I am not an affiliate for this company and earn no compensation for this post. Please check with your state or country regarding the legalities of providing teletherapy.