Telehealth is the use of telecommunication or virtual consultations for therapeutic services. As an alternative to face-to-face appointments, Occupational Therapists at this practice make use of video conferencing to offer assessments, therapy sessions and parent consultations through online platforms that are deemed safe and secure by South African health industry norms. We also make use of other platforms, such as WhatsApp (text messages, voice-notes, video calls, photo and video sharing), emails, home programmes and telephone calls, in order to provide therapeutic services.
Telehealth services are typically provided in situations where you or your child cannot attend face-to-face appointments. Telehealth services may also be provided in addition to face-to-face appointments to facilitate and enable ongoing support and guidance in the best interest of your child. Your therapist will discuss your child’s current functioning with you and will offer you support which is most suited to your child’s individual differences. Telehealth services, as with face-to-face consultations, are time-based billing codes and therefore billed at usual therapy tariffs, unless special billing arrangements have been agreed upon between the therapist and client.
Parents are welcome to accompany and support their children during their Telehealth consultations as they would during face-to-face therapy sessions. In certain situations, parent or caregiver presence may be required to ensure the success of the intervention. Please note that Telehealth therapy sessions will not be identical to face-to-face therapy sessions. Some therapeutic activities and techniques are reliant on hands-on facilitation and specialized equipment which cannot always be 100% replicated via Telehealth. Occupational therapy is, however, well suited to Telehealth services as Occupational Therapists are trained to be “out of the box” thinkers utilizing their skills in activity analysis and their continuous consideration of the environment the client finds themselves in. In our practice’s experience, Telehealth intervention has proved extremely useful to facilitate a deeper understanding of our clients and improving parent-therapist collaboration by bringing therapy into homes.