Today’s post was contributed by our WebPT Support Team Lead, Alex Zarazua. Thanks Alex!

This morning we are happy to announce that WebPT has launched a number of new enhanced features and support tools. For this latest release we received suggestions and feature requests from hundreds of our members. We’re very excited to share our updates with all of you!

Today we are introducing our newly designed Digital Flowsheet. The new Flowsheet has been refreshed to include multiple locations, an easier way to work with multiple patients, faster exercise searching and integration with our Home Exercise Program. In addition, the new and improved flowsheet has been designed with a tablet friendly user interface.  

Our Member Support team is excited to announce a new tool that gives members even more access to technical resources. Powered by Zendesk, our new support tool gives our members exclusive access to articles, videos and user guides. Members will also have the ability to create new support tickets and view solved tickets as well. Members can access support by clicking “Help” on the bottom right of the WebPT application.

Other updates include clinical and documentation enhancements, billing additions, new Home Exercise Program videos and pictures, and overall system enhancements. Members have access to a detailed list of improvements by viewing “Discover Ideas in Action” under the Community Icon in the WebPT application.

If you have more ideas on how we can make WebPT better we want to hear them. Email them to support@webpt.com, submit a ticket by clicking “help” in the application or visit our Ideas Portal!

The WebPT member community includes some of the most business savvy physical therapists out there. Many of you have let us know that you would like to use WebPT as a business tool the same way it serves many of your clinical needs. We have heard that call and are looking to build innovative products to help you grow your business. One tool that we have recently released into the system will give you new capabilities when it comes to tracking and analyzing marketing initiatives. Many WebPT members use print ads, billboards, online ads, SEO, and other marketing campaigns to help bring in new patients. Tracking is the number one rule of smart marketing and we hope this new tool will help you track your marketing dollars better.

WebPT now gives you the ability to track your clinics marketing efforts with the contact manager and the referral report. It only takes a minute to get a new marketing referral source set up in the system.

Add:  To add a new referral source, click on the ‘Add Contact’ link within the Contact Manager. You can find this button on the left hand side of WebPT.

You now have the capability to choose from 7 different referral types: Lawyer, Case Manager, Existing Patient, Search Engine, Ad Campaign, Self, or Other. Choose the appropriate referral source and type the name information and contact info if applicable. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the save button. Once you have completed this step, you have successfully added a marketing referral contact into WebPT.

Select: The marketing referral source will be recorded on a per patient basis at the time the patient is entered into the system or at the time you are adding a new case for an existing patient. The marketing referral contact field is accessible from the case information page, directly below the patient’s referring physician information. The drop down menu will allow you to choose from any referral sources you have already entered. If you want to add a new one, you can do that from this screen by clicking on the ‘Add New Referral Contact’ link. Here you will have many of the same options as the ‘Add Contact’ form we looked at earlier. Enter all of the applicable information and click on the ‘Save’ button to complete the action. You will then see your new marketing referral contact in the drop down menu, available for selection.

Track: You can track your different referral sources from the referral report in the tools area of WebPT. If you toggle the referral type to show only my search engine referrals, the referral report will show me a total and then a breakdown by individual source.  You can also manipulate the date range to get a month-by-month comparison for each of your marketing campaigns. If you would like a visual walkthrough on this new tool, you can view a quick video here.

This tool will help you keep track of all of your marketing efforts and maximize your ad dollars. This is our first step in making WebPT a valuable and powerful business tool for our entire member community. If you have business needs that WebPT can help to solve, please submit your suggestions to the WebPT Idea Portal.

The rehabilitation space is one of the more compassionate medical disciplines. Many WebPT members spend an hour of one-on-one time with their patients to ensure the best quality of care is delivered. While this attitude should be mimicked and admired across the healthcare field, it does create some concerns when it comes to the implementation of technology.

A recent article titled, “The Loss of Eloquence in EMR Notes” highlights the inability of some clinicians to tell the story of their patients with a rigid EMR. I believe this is a legitimate issue that is exacerbated in the PT space. Take, for instance, a pediatric therapist who has to tell the story of a child with a developmental issue. They may have years of information from a parent to relay in an exam.

The solution to the problem lies in the development process of the EMR software. If a provider does not consider the end user, ultimately, they are not considering the patient. It is important in your search to make sure your EMR provider understands what goes into a patient encounter and is flexible enough to accommodate the vast range of patient visits. 

The other critique mentioned in the article is a phenomenon called ‘Doc Block’.

'Doc Block’ refers to a computer being placed in between the clinician and the patient, which can make patient visits cold and impersonal. For physical therapists, this can be a major issue for a couple of reasons.