Limber Health Inc, a provider of advanced digital health solutions, announces new research conducted at Mayo Clinic validating that its digital home-exercise therapy app reduces pain and improves function, equipping health care providers with a clinical tool to expand patient access to therapy through a hybrid-care model.

This validation comes just as clinicians can receive insurance reimbursement for utilization of new models of care combining conventional and remote therapy approaches. The final 2022 Medicare Fee Schedule includes Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes for remotely monitoring musculoskeletal (MSK) patients.

For the first time, physicians and physical therapists can be reimbursed for remotely monitoring their MSK patients’ progress via digital health tools such as Limber’s clinically validated platform, Limber Health notes in a media release.

A randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted at Mayo Clinic suggests that patients with knee pain who used Limber’s digital exercise therapy app had superior functional and pain improvement compared to those who had conventional in-person PT. Limber’s patient-centered, cost-effective solution addresses the gap in care by aligning patient and provider goals while providing the right services to the right patients, fostering better engagement and progress tracking.

Exercises and Education

Developed by physicians and physical therapists, the patent-pending, HIPAA-compliant Limber app guides patients through at-home exercises for all MSK conditions. Physical therapists or physicians can either build their personalized home-exercise program from Limber’s library of thousands of exercise videos with verbal coaching or select from more than 100 pre-built, progressive protocols developed for nonsurgical, regenerative, surgical, and maintenance cases.

Additionally, the platform features robust education for patients and tracks patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) in Limber’s registry, which was recently named a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)-approved qualified clinical data registry (QCDR).

Limber partners with providers—including orthopedists, physiatrists, and physical therapists—empowering them to remain at the center of their patients’ care by initiating and remotely monitoring therapy progress. Patients have the option to use Limber at home via the app or in combination with in-person visits. To enable health care providers to use this hybrid-care model, Limber helped to pioneer the newly approved Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM) billing codes, which were developed by the American Medical Association (AMA) to ensure providers can receive reimbursement for initial set-up, patient education, and supply of remote MSK devices, as well as monthly remote monitoring of their patients.

“Early prescribed PT and adherence to therapy improves outcomes. Compliance with physical therapy often can be hindered by lack of access to therapy, needing to take time away from work, cost, and a lack of innovative solutions that integrate seamlessly with providers. Limber meets patients where they are by creating access to science-driven, engaging, and easy-to-follow exercise therapy while tracking progress throughout the episode to best support orthopedic patients.”

— Dr. Marc Gruner, chief medical officer and cofounder of Limber Health

Additionally, Limber has developed an innovative value-based care model in conjunction with providers and payors.

“Providers have so much on their plate, and Limber is committed to making it easier for them to deliver quality care by providing a turnkey solution that seamlessly integrates into their workflow and electronic health record system. Our solution keeps patients at the center of care, empowering providers with digital tools to deliver a hybrid care model of in-person interventions and at-home monitoring.”

— Jake Grundstein, DPT, vice president of clinical operations and value-based care at Limber

Features

Among Limber’s many features:

• For patients:
  • Exercise therapy programming built for every MSK condition, including low back, shoulder, hip, neck, knee, foot, ankle, hand, and wrist pain
  • Easy-to-follow home-exercise videos, featuring real patients completing each exercise with physical therapist-led verbal coaching
  • Robust education curated by doctors in orthopedics, sports medicine, and physical therapy
  • Remote patient support, including one-to-one patient communication with their care team
• For providers:
  • Regular updates and real-time access to patients’ progress and adherence, including changes in PROMs and program completion
  • Patent-pending risk stratification and predictive analytics tool
  • Comprehensive MSK assessment and triage functionality
  • Industry-leading outcomes tracking and care navigation

[Source(s): Limber Health, Business Wire]