Pain Relief PT Finally Finds a HIPAA-Compliant Custom HEP Solution

How AC Health Helped Gyrotonic Manhasset Physical Therapy

The Challenge: HIPAA-Compliant Custom HEP Solution

Marni Larkin came to AC Health having tried almost every other solution on the market – and all of them had failed both her and her patients at Gyrotonic Manhasset Physical Therapy.

In her specialty of chronic pain relief, it was imperative that her patients keep moving and complying with their exercises – in the studio and at home.
“If patients don’t keep moving, then they fall into this self-fulfilling prophecy,” Ms. Larkin explains. “They say to themselves, ‘I can’t do this exercise because of this reason, this pain. If only that were gone!’ “What they don’t realize, is that that reason – that excuse – will only go away if they move in the right way. That self-limitation means they’ll never get well, until they start complying with their exercises.”

Ms. Larkin had seen the best success with compliance if she offered her patients customized exercise videos and instructions as part of their HEPs. “That way, my therapy is patient-centered, not expert-down,” she says.

Despite this discovery, she could not for the life of her find a decent delivery platform.

Marni Larkin, PT, OCS
New York, US

Case Study-Marni Larkin-Quote-061721_ARS

Major PT tech stacks often offered HEP tools as an add-on, but they only had generic libraries – not custom exercise tools. The generic videos themselves often “created a sense of failure” for her patients in two ways:
1. They were “too gimmicky or accessory-driven” to be really useful for actual patient care, and
2. “The models were too perfect.” The demonstrators made her patients feel like they’d never be able to do it like the model anyway, so why bother trying? (It was the exact opposite of the compliance she was aiming for!)
Some HEP tools, in her words, “had sexy marketing, but were complete garbage” at doing what she needed them to do: Create exercises and deliver HEPs to clients.
Common video platforms were designed for casual browsing and public view – not HIPAA-compliant health treatments. (“Plus, I kept running into storage limits with Vimeo,” she adds.)

Finally, during an APTA webinar, she asked her fellow providers if anyone had a custom HEP app they could recommend – and that’s when she heard about AC Health.

Ms. Larkin’s Problem	AC Health’s Solution
She had tried other applications that “had sexy marketing, but were complete garbage” at actual daily use for creating exercises and producing care plans. Frankly, she needed something that really worked for both provider and patient.	AC Health was designed first and foremost for the patient – which meant keeping its user experience intuitive and easy-to-use. After all, what good are flashy features if a provider can’t create exercises or an HEP? (Ms. Larkin has also helped shaped the AC Health app into what it is today, suggesting new features that are practical for providers – not what looks cool for a 60-second marketing video.)
She had also tried other video platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo, but found they weren’t good enough for custom health exercises, since they weren’t HIPAA-compliant and often had storage limits.	AC Health offers unlimited custom exercises of any length, stored securely in the cloud instead of clogging up your device’s memory. And, we’ve ensured that the AC Health App meets or exceeds HIPAA requirements for privacy and security. Ms. Larkin can record and assign as many custom exercises as her patients need without worrying about a bandwidth ceiling or an accidental privacy breach.
She even considered filming patient exercises on their own phones, but felt that the method wasn’t as secure or HIPAA-compliant as it needed to be.	Ms. Larkin’s custom AC Health “channel” combines HIPAA-compliant privacy measures with the modern patient’s expectations for instant communication and customized personal experiences. With AC Health, she can assign HEPs and communicate with her patients via video, photo, or text – all through a secure, private channel in a single app.
She had difficulty sending patient instructions in a way that was private but also allowed her to make and share updates quickly.	AC Health combines HIPAA-compliant privacy measures with the modern patient’s expectations for instant communication and customized personal experiences. Now, every Gyrotonic Pelvic Health patient can watch their HEPs and ask questions comfortably and privately.
She wanted to ensure her patients kept moving, in order to truly heal and keep pain at bay. That meant developing HEPs that were not only custom to each patient, but also actually completed. (After all, an HEP with no compliance is just a wish-list – not an actual course of treatment!)	Thanks to AC Health’s integration of behavior modification research within the App’s design, Ms. Larkin sees increased engagement and improvement – between sessions and between evaluations – leading to much-needed pain relief and better patient outcomes.

THE AC HEALTH RESULTS

Quick and Easy Custom HEPs

“I’m basically getting paid to create patient HEPs, since I film them during their sessions. I don’t have to waste time after-hours pulling together HEPs anymore!”

HIPAA Compliant Delivery

“AC Health was the only HEP platform that let me upload my own exercises while still being HIPAA-compliant. What a game-changer!”

Increased Patient Compliance

“AC Health was the missing piece to what I was already doing all along. It offers a clear pathway for patient treatments, in a way that’s a patient-centered therapy versus an expert-down approach.”

Improve Patient Outcomes

“My patients see me, themselves, in the video on AC Health, and that helps them complete their exercises. Anything that encourages them to keep moving all the time enhances my patient outcomes!”

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