The Challenge

WebPT is the leading physical therapy electronic medical record (EMR) system. With comprehensive and HIPAA-compliant technology, WebPT allows physicians to stay therapy-centric and for clinics to stay digitally scalable.

Keeping Detailed Patient Charts Without Detracting from Patient Care

While WebPT streamlines making patient records more accessible and accurate, any physician using any EMR would tell you that patient charting is their least favorite part of the job. Instead of spending time with patients, physicians get bogged down making sure their records are detailed for their own internal use, patient reference, and to submit to insurance companies.

Often, updating patient notes includes typing the same phrases over and over again, from simple words like “patient” to longer paragraphs of exercise descriptions. That might not sound too bad for 1 or 2 patients, but imagine the headache of repetitively writing the same notes for your 10th patient all in the same day.

If I don’t give my patients the attention they deserve, that’s not good care. But if I wait until the end of the day to document nine patients all in a row, that’s not going to be accurate either. So I spent a lot of time looking for a way to make my job more efficient.
- Joe Kagan, PT, DPT, Aspen Valley Hospital

That’s why WebPT physicians need an easy solution to quickly and effectively chart patient details and treatment plans.

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The Solution

Improving the physician experience

Michael conducts home visits as a travel physical therapist on a residential island in the Tacoma, WA area. Like many physicians, his days are lined up back-to-back with 8-9 appointments each day, when he checks in with how his patients are feeling, practices physical therapy exercises, and fills in evaluation notes

Patient evaluations on WebPT include subjective, exercise, and assessment sections with open text areas for Michael to fill in. So, Michael often finds himself typing the same things over and over again—from simple words like “patient” to longer descriptions of injuries and exercises.

Trigger: ptt Shortcut: patient

Trigger: x1 Shortcut: 1 set of 10 repetitions

Trigger: -cont Shortcut: Patient will continue to benefit from physical therapy to improvement their mobility and strength.

Michael usually fills in his notes while his patients rest—but the 5 minute breaks are rarely enough to finish. (And with driving between patients factored in, he doesn’t have any time to spare catching up.) His previous physical therapy clinic used an EMR with built-in shortcuts, so when he switched over to WebPT, he immediately started looking for a similar solution.

"If I couldn’t use Magical, it would slow my progress to have to think more about writing a novel and less about getting through the key points are needed for patient care and patient documentation."

Within five minutes, Michael was able to integrate Magical into his workflow. He uses Magical for every patient, every day, quickly and efficiently documenting patient visits. His shortcuts include easy-to-fill-in variable information—such as patient name, or severity of injury—to help him personalize them in just a few seconds. In fact, his notes are so comprehensive that several of his coworkers have warned him not to burn himself out by spending too much time writing notes.

All the little things start to add up… Magical makes it so much easier to quickly and efficiently document things… It saves a ton of time, and it’s free. - Michael Kovach

With Magical, Michael is able to save 1.5 hours a day keeping his patient notes up to date - or around 8 hours per week.

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Getting back to what matters: patient care

Jorge sees mostly Medicaid and Medicare patients at Steppin’ Up Physical Therapy in Fort Wayne, IN. Last year, he saw the most patients in his entire clinic (over 600!) and regularly sees 10-11 patients a day. In order to maintain such a high output, Jorge uses Magical to complete more than 80% of his patient notes, saving him an extra hour every day.

Steppin’ Up Physical Therapy’s motto is “Compassion, Hospitality, and Results.” With a person-first mindset, their physicians prioritize the eye contact and one-on-one time that show that they care about their patients’ recoveries. Before Magical, Jorge had stacks of digital sticky notes that he would copy-paste from, requiring him to keep his eyes on his screen. With a text expansion solution like Magical, he can care for his patients in a way that reflects his physician philosophy of putting patients first.

"If you’re paying a copay to come see a physical therapist, you don’t want someone who’s just staring at your screen. It doesn’t feel like you’re being listened to. It’s a balance between giving patients my attention and not letting myself get behind."

Magical not only helps Jorge focus on patients, but also submit the quality notes they need for insurance. Often times, insurance companies require extensive justification and standardized terminology to continue coverage. Goal setting and progress updates are especially crucial—Jorge might have up to six goals for a patient, and Magical makes it easy for him to fill all of the fields just a few keystrokes.

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For any patient, goal setting and progress updates are especially crucial towards insurance documentation - Jorge might have up to six goals for a patient, and Magical makes it easy for him to fill all of the fields just a few keystrokes.

Especially where I’m at where I see a lot of Medicaid patients, I have to justify the need for therapy. When it comes to insurance, your job is to prove to them that the patients need it and to prove it more you need to be wordy. I don’t have to worry about that with Magical.

With Magical, Jorge ensures his patients continue to receive the utmost care without burning out from patient charting.

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The Results

In the past 12 months (October 2020 - October 2021), Magical has saved 357 physicians over 10,000 hours for physicians on WebPT. They’ve accumulated:

• 50 billion characters expanded
• 191,200 patient chart sections filled with Magical
• 16,747 unique phrases and sentences to use in charting

And we’re just getting started.

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