"Physical therapy is not a subspecialty of the medical profession and physical therapists are not medical doctors; we are a separate profession that provides a unique service that physicians are unable and untrained to provide."

Letter to the AMA from the APTA, Dec 2009

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Are Patients Protected from Healthcare Algorithms?

Physical therapists are considering algorithms, such as Treatment Based Classification, to help improve patient care.

But, according to this TED talk, algorithms sometimes run amok, conflicting with one another in an endless loop.

Such an endless loop may have caused the 2:45 "Flash Crash" that caused $1 trillion dollars to just disappear



Healthcare algorithms can provide clinical decision support in Electronic Medical Records (EMR).

If they can behave anything like financial algorithms then physical therapists must demand proper protection for patients before using them.

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Tim Richardson, PT owns a private practice at Medical Arts Rehabilitation, Inc in Palmetto, Florida. The clinic website is at MedicalArtsRehab.com.

Bulletproof Expert Systems: Clinical Decision Support for Physical Therapists in the Outpatient Setting is a manager's workbook with stories, checklists, charts, graphs, tables, and templates describing how you can use paper-based or computerized tools to improve your clinic's Medicare compliance, process adherence and patient outcomes.

Tim has implemented a computerized Clinical Decision Support (CDS) system in his clinic since 2006 that serves as a Reminder, Alerting, Prompting and Predicting CDS using evidence-based tests and measures.

Tim can be reached at
TimRichPT@BulletproofPT.com .

"Make Decisions like Doctors"


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Consistent with the American Physical Therapy Association Vision Statement for Physical Therapy 2020, the American Physical Therapy Association supports exclusive physical therapist ownership and operation of physical therapy services.