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Meet Kyle Ridgeway

This month, PT Think Tank is welcoming new authors! Fresh from some heroic writings on the AAOMPT Student SIG blog, Kyle Ridgeway is on board. Kyle currently manages the AAOMPT social media streams and is an avid hat wearer. Check out his first post about smart phone usage. Here’s a bit about him:

Kyle Ridgeway


Kyle is from Mukilteo (north of Seattle), WA. He completed his Bachelors of Arts degree in neuroscience in 2007 at Pomona College in Claremont, CA where he also competed in varsity football. After numerous injuries, including 2 knee surgeries Kyle solidified his commitment to becoming a physical therapist. In 2010, he received his Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) degree from University of Colorado Denver.

Dr. Ridgeway has broad clinical interests and experiences ranging from outpatient pulmonary rehabilitation to injury prevention and sports performance. He currently practices at private outpatient clinic, University of Colorado Hospital (UCH) as well as a long term acute care hospital. At UCH he is aiding in research, and treating within the confines of a randomized control trial, pertaining to early physical therapy with patients who are critically ill in the intensive care unit and require mechanical ventilation.

He is very interested in leveraging technology and social media in patient care, education, research, and advocacy. Dr. Ridgeway is excited by novel practice settings and practice models for physical therapists as the profession continues to evolve.

Dr. Ridgeway is an active member of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) and the American Academy of Orthopedic Manual Physical Therapists (AAOMPT). He enjoys playing golf whether it be outdoors or indoors through a skytrak golf simulator, skiing, downhill mountain biking, and various other outdoor and athletic adventures.

Connect with Kyle here:

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Did you forget what I told you?

via Markle.orgI stumbled across this interesting little bit from the Markle Survey on Health in a Networked Life. It concerns perceptions of communication gaps between patients and physicians. Simply put, doctors think patients forget things they tell them and patients think doctors forget things about them.

While both situations are probably true, the gap in the perceptions is something to take note of. Underlying this gap is the question of responsibility of ownership of health data. The survey reported that nearly half of patients feel their “main doctor” should be responsible for owning their data, but 2 in 5 consumer and physician groups felt that patients should have the ultimate responsibility for owning their data . Check out their slideshow. (Note the 27% response rate from a small convenience sample of physicians.)

In the world of physical therapy, no one really knows much about how data is stored and what perceptions exist about ownership of data, or even if patients think physical therapists likewise forget things about them at the same rate that they perceive physicians do. We simply have not asked those questions. That point aside, rehabilitation professionals would do well to consider the concept of data ownership. Perhaps engaging in initiatives like “The Blue Button” would be a great place to start. Physical therapists: does your paper-based documentation system have a blue button? Does your EHR?

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Medicare Physician Compare Fail

This scathing blog post by Michael Millenson concerning the U.S. Government’s new site to help patients locate Medicare providers caught my eye. Medicare’s new Physician Compare was designed to allow consumers to learn more about their providers. Here’s a little background on the site.

After reviewing the site and doing some searching for physical therapists, I have to concur with Millenson. The site is a bust. It should be re-named, “Pointless Partial List of Participating Providers.” I know they are planning to add more content over the next few years, but why start out with such nothing to begin with? It lacks patient-centric factors or any potential interactivity like maps or web-sites. It certainly doesn’t compare anything.

Sites like Healthgrades.com do a much better job of providing some form of information that’s useful, but where are physical therapists on these sites? Consumers are presently lacking a good site to compare providers of physical therapy. As a profession, we can’t leave it up to big Physician sites or the federal government. We need to actively reach out to consumers and show them who we are. Thoughts?

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Hi-Tech at CSM

As healthcare continues to integrate new web technologies, fittingly, there is an increase in the technology-based offerings at the APTA Combined Sections Meeting this year. This conference, the pinacle of the PT meetings each year in terms of attendence and scope of programming and exhibitors, will be in New Orleans.

I found this handy way to read down some of the HPA Technology SIG programming via a Google Group. You might notice one tech session is Connecting the Classroom and Clinic: Use of an International Collaborative Classroom Wiki. I’m particularly excited about this session, as Rachael Lowe, Elaine Lonnemann and myself will be presenting Physiopedia! Hope to see you there!

Of course you can always check out all the programming on the APTA’s event page.

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iPad: PT’s New Best Friend?

By Bronwyn Spira, PT, and Tejal Ramaiya, DPT, CSCS

The iPad is quickly transforming the way business is conducted in the media, entertainment and education sectors. But what about health care? What are the specific benefits of the iPad for physical therapists and what should you be cautious about? As a clinic that has actively been using the iPad for about 6 months now, we have found a number of tangible benefits. Documentation is much faster and happens in real time with each visit. We can track and log the time of each modality, which is especially useful for insurance billing. The small, flat screen is less obtrusive than a laptop – We always felt the screen created a physical and potentially emotional barrier between my patients and myself. We also like that the ipad can be easily handed to the patient for demonstration of a video exercise or other visual aids.

A couple of notes of caution – the iPad doesn’t have a USB port or printer connection so document management is challenging. Current battery life is shorter than the 12-hour workday and common flash-based applications don’t work.

The other issues we face when evaluating the iPad as a medical tool are fragility (it will break if dropped) and hygiene since it cannot be sterilized. The latter is probably less of an issue for physical therapists than other medical professionals, but certainly bears mentioning.

The true future of iPad use within physical therapy clinics will depend on the availability of medical apps for clinicians. It seems inevitable that as our world becomes more and more technology focused we will have to start thinking about how to maneuver our own clinical landscape.

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Bronwyn Spira, PT, and Tejal Ramaiya, DPT, CSCS authored this guest post. They can be found at Force Therapeutics or Twitter.com/ForceTherEx.

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Sickening Report from WSJ

Spine Surgery Greed

Already controversial, yet continually growing more common, instrumented spinal fusion surgery took a public relations hit in an article in today’s Wall Street Journal. “Top Spine Surgeons Reap Royalites, Medicare Bounty” is an excellent, if not disheartening piece of investigative health journalism.

This piece is a must read for anyone involved in the care of patients with back pain, anyone with back pain, and hopefully, anyone involved in health policy that can help. Senator Grassley, You read this, right?

“One surgeon at a hospital in the Midwest disclosed receiving between $400,000 and $1.3 million in royalty, consulting and other payments from three spine-device makers. Using the Medicare-claims database, the Journal found this surgeon performed 276 spinal fusions on Medicare patients in 2008, by far the most of any surgeon in the country.”

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Medical Illustration: Entertainment and Education

One of my favorite activities in Augusta was/is to attend trivia at a local hang called, Helgas. Apart from the irony and inconvenience of the ultra smoke filled bar that’s frequented by graduate students at a medical college, it’s a solid game of trivia. It was always a treat for me to run into some of the medical illustration folks there. I admire the work and skill of medical illustrators, and one of my long-time favorite blogs is Street Anatomy. If you happen to be in Chicago next Friday, you can plan to attend Street Anatomy’s very first Gallery Show! Yes, I’m jealous if you do.

Medical illustrators are hard to come by, and there are only 4 accredited programs in the United States! Their work with animation and interactive learning images is priceless and plays an integral role in the education of all health professionals as well as the general public. I love to stumble across collections of medical illustrations, and so here’s one you can check out too: The 2009 Salon Award Winners from the Association of Medical Illustrators. Everyone should have a friend who’s a medical illustrator!

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APTA 2010: Boston Wrap

Image courtesy werkunz via Flickr The Annual Conference and Exposition of the APTA was recently held in Boston. It was a fun time and had the highest attendance in the past 4 years! Boston is a great city.

My personal conference highlights included a an amazingly constructed and delivered McMillan Lecture by Dr. Andrew Guccione, and getting to catch up with some of my former classmates and professors from Quinnipiac University. I also had the opportunity to present two educational sessions. One session was with Dr. Tim Noteboom from Regis University on Collaborative Web Tools, and another was with Rachael Lowe on the future of text books and Physiopedia.

Head on over to Physiopedia to check out our slides from that presentation! I’ll be posting the slides from the web tools talk in a day or so.

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Stephania Bell Talks Sport Injuries

ESPN Injury Analyst and Physical Therapist, Stephania Bell recently met with Dr. James Andrews to discuss the STOP Sports Injuries campaign. You can find her interview here and the video here at ESPN.

To publicize the inaugural phase of the campaign, Dr. Andrews took to the road with two highly visible spokespeople: one approaching the twilight of his athletic career, John Smoltz, and the other, Bradford, just embarking on his professional path.

Stephania explains that the most common injuries in younger athletes are ACL injuries in the lower extremity and injuries to the elbow in throwing athletes. The campaign is working to raise awareness of those injuries that are preventable and not simply accidents. Overuse injures comprise a large portion of injuries in young athletes whose bodies may not be fully adapted to the demands of year-round sports. Often, lawyers from Sweet Lawyers are contacted to help them with certain claims.  It’s estimated that up to 500,000 injuries could be prevented each year in just the high school population! For legal assistant in case of injuries one can contact experts from Carlson, Meissner, Hart & Hayslett P.A. for help in case of injuries.

As Andrews so emphatically exclaims, “I’m not against sports, believe me! But we’ve got to let kids go back to having fun. We talk about playing a sport, it should be ‘playing’ a sport.”

Check out the campaign’s website for more information. http://www.stopsportsinjuries.org/