The Health Gap Analysis: Why We Need to Think Backwards to Move Forward With Rehab
What Is Wrong with Healthcare Today?
The current state of healthcare, particularly in the realm of physical therapy and rehabilitation, reveals troubling trends.
The first of these is the misaligned education of Physical Therapists (PTs). Their learning predominantly concentrates on identifying what’s wrong with a patient. Though such a diagnostic-centric approach is crucial, it often falls short because it rarely equips PTs with the strategies required to rectify identified issues effectively.
Second, our healthcare system rewards providers for keeping people ill, and not when they achieve their health goals.
”When sick people get better, healthcare providers lose business,” says Dr. Ryan Chow, founder of Reload. “Where’s the incentive to make people better, if it’s sick people that are good for business?”
This healthcare model inadvertently creates a conflict of interest. Can you be sure that your provider isn’t in the business of maintaining you in a cycle of treatment? The outcome is that healthcare decisions can become influenced by business needs rather than solely by what is best for the patient.
Next, we see that this skewed system induces healthcare providers to prioritize short-term solutions that ensure patients keep returning rather than addressing the root cause of fitness issues. For example, a patient may receive a series of massages that provide only temporary relief without actually tackling the underlying issue (sounds familiar, right?). Get into this routine, and you’ve quietly slipped into a cycle of dependency in which real recovery remains elusive.
With the intertwining of healthcare and business interests, there’s the risk of judgment being clouded. Healthcare providers, even with the best intentions, might find their decisions swayed by the need to sustain their practice. This misalignment can lead to a healthcare experience where the priority subtly shifts from achieving the best health outcomes for patients to maintaining a steady flow of business.
The above factors combine to create a healthcare landscape where true recovery and optimal health can sometimes take a backseat to other interests. That’s not good for you.
Healthcare Means Looking at What Happens Before and After
The journey of healthcare should not be a fragmented one. There’s a critical need for providers who understand the continuum of care – what happens before and after a particular treatment or therapy.
In the U.S., the qualifications for fitness instructors are alarmingly minimal, with no requirements for understanding basic anatomy, physiology, or musculoskeletal functions. This creates a significant ‘fitness gap’, where instructors lack the expertise to effectively bridge the space between fitness and rehab.
Our approach at Reload differs; we possess the scientific background and practical skills to seamlessly integrate fitness and rehab. We believe in the importance of understanding the entire context – not just isolated incidents of care.
Given the current healthcare landscape, it’s not surprising that treatment often lacks a holistic approach. What you get is a fragmented journey. What you should receive is a continuum that encompasses all that happens before and after specific treatment or therapies.
The disconnect between rehab and performance means that physical therapists pass on the responsibility to fitness instructors without a seamless transition. Exacerbating this are the minimal qualifications needed to become a fitness instructor in the United States.
“You don’t have to know any joints, muscles, physiology. You don’t have to know anything. As long as you can sell personal training packages or get people to show up to your group class, you’re considered the fitness instructor,” explains Ryan. “Therefore, most instructors are not qualified to pick up where the next person left off.
“That’s the gap we fill at Reload. We have a science background. We have the application, the skill, the expertise, the knowledge, the practice – the ability to fill those gaps between fitness and rehab, with seamless programs that bridge the gap between rehab and performance.”
Why You Should Look for a Provider with both Rehab and Performance Experience
“In my personal experience – as both a personal fitness trainer and a physical therapist – I’ve noticed a key difference,” Ryan says. “In personal training, I work with the same individual consistently, often multiple times a week, which allows me to thoroughly understand their context. I can investigate deeply and gain a comprehensive understanding of the person.
“This is my ‘secret weapon’, something that doctors and many rehab specialists often lack. They usually have limited time to make a diagnosis, recommend a course of action, and teach the patient what they need to know. Often, an appointment lasts no longer than 15 minutes.”
It’s this consistency and continuity of approach that makes such a big difference to fitness outcomes. People evolve. As do their situations and circumstances. A doctor who sees you once in a blue moon cannot be aware of these changes.
So, unhappy with the lack of progress you’re making, you head toward the top of the tree. Example? The King of the Hill for musculoskeletal pain and injury is an orthopedic surgeon. They know their stuff, don’t they? But most of their knowledge has been accumulated from all those years in school – learning about surgery.
Often, the surgeons tell people how to do exercise and how to modify their activities. Yet they never actually watch people do exercises and then see what happens to the body in response to it.
So, here’s the conundrum that patients face: the people you trust most are not actually qualified to make decisions about exercise! They have zero experience doing this and zero training doing this. Worried? You should be. Surgery does not always align with your best interests.
What Does Reload Do Differently? Measure the Gap!
The first thing you’ll notice is the time we take to get to know you. To give the best advice and design an effective, personalized therapy and exercise program, we need to know where you’re coming from, the fitness goals you have, and the life you lead. This allows us to measure your fitness gap.
We spend significant time debunking misconceptions and educating our clients about their conditions.
“Perhaps our most powerful tool is education. A lot of our clients misunderstand their situation. People might think they need rehab to get back to doing what they want to do. However, they may be experiencing pain, but they don’t need to do rehab; they need to improve performance. The reason they have pain is because their performance isn’t high enough,” Ryan explains.
“It doesn’t make sense for you to go to your doctor and say, ‘Hey, I have this problem because…’. That’s our job to discover and describe the problem, and to tell you what to do about it.
“The client always knows best about the situation, but there is a lot of education that needs to be done about how we arrived here in the first place.”
An example is a marathon runner who regularly runs the full 26 miles without pain. But ask them to run 50 miles, or 75 miles, and they begin to experience pain in their ankles:
Are they running too much?
Do they need rehab?
Are they missing the importance of rest and recovery in fitness and sport?
Do they need performance training?
Which do you think is least likely?
The Importance of Understanding the Entire Context
Our approach is rooted in understanding the entire context of a patient’s health journey, not just isolated incidents of care. It’s about seeing the bigger picture – how the various elements of your life, health history, current condition, and goals influence each other. It’s about measuring your personal performance gap.
We take a holistic approach to create a fully tailored program that relieves the symptoms and addresses the root causes for long-term recovery and performance improvement. As part of this, we encompass what happens before and after treatment, shifting you from fragmented care to integrated knowledge and application.
In conclusion, here at Reload we work on gaps – gaps created by an industry that profits on keeping you below your movement goals, and the more personal health goal gaps of where you are now and where you want to be.
To begin your journey to your personal health goals, book a comprehensive 90-minute body evaluation with Reload.
