Skip to main content

Embodia's 2022 Year In Review
By: Maggie Bergeron, BSc, MScPT, Co-Founder of Embodia, Edited by Nataliya Zlotnikov (HBSc, MSc)

Let's Briefly Recap 2022

Wait, is 2022 over already? *internal screaming in confusion* 

I thought it was still 2020. Where did the past two years go?!

I think we may have misplaced them somewhere between COVID-19, along with the TV remote, our missing socks, and a bit of our sanity (which we hope to recuperate in 2023)!

In 2022, we saw the relaxation and lifting of many COVID restrictions worldwide. 

But even with the lifting of restrictions, many of us chose to continue using a hybrid model of care due to the numerous benefits of telerehab. 

Many organizations and clinics recognized that simply returning to the way we’ve always provided care will not future-proof their business. Erika James, Dean of the Wharton School, puts it this way:

 

Quote by Erica James

 

PC Points for Physiotherapy? 

On March 14, 2022, Loblaw announced that it will acquire Toronto-based Lifemark Health Corp. from U.S. private equity firm Audax, adding 300 clinics to the Shoppers Drug Mart network.

With Loblaw recently taking the Lifemark throne for a cool $845 million, it's hard not to think about what could be in store for physiotherapy in Canada.

And based on reactions across the country, it could be a watershed moment for the profession.

 

Looking to Get Licensed as a Physiotherapist in Canada?

The PT licensing challenges across Canada continued. With CAPR no longer providing the clinical PCE (at least temporarily), each province/territory was left to decide how they would license physiotherapists within their jurisdiction. Click here to find a summary of what’s happening across the country.

 

Code Blue in the Canadian Healthcare System

From a broader healthcare context, little has changed in our broken healthcare system. We’ve all seen the headlines. Wait times of up to 20 hours in emergency rooms. Patients dying in hallways. Nurse shortages and burnouts. And increasingly frequent temporary closures of hospital units. In this Maclean’s article, Dr. Andrew Boozary dissects proposed solutions like privatization and prescribes a new approach to delivering health care across Canada.

 

Women in Sports Making Headlines

Finally, on a brighter note - funding is increasing for women's sports and, with it, the opportunity for Sports Physiotherapists, Athletic Therapists, and others on the sports medicine teams.

Women’s soccer scored big in 2022. The Women’s Euro Championship in July was watched by some 365 million people worldwide, more than double the 2017 viewership. Three months later, nearly 77,000 fans packed into London’s Wembley Stadium for a U.S.-England showdown — a record attendance for a U.S. women’s friendly match.

Sponsorship can help kick off a “virtuous circle,” says Karen Carney, a veteran England women's soccer player and broadcaster. An investment enables women athletes to train and play full-time, which lifts the quality of the sport, in turn attracting more fans and sponsors. Money poured into women’s soccer following the 2019 Women's World Cup, Carney notes. "And now, in 2022, the product has improved as a result." With investment and audiences growing for other women’s sports, more virtuous circles are on their way.

 

Embodia in 2022

So what happened in Embodia in 2022?

In 2022, we launched our own in-house telerehab platform and did a bunch of other cool things. 

What kind of things do you ask? Well, the rest of this blog will recap some of the other great happenings in and around Embodia over the past calendar year. 

 

Home Exercise Programs (HEP) on Embodia

Throughout the year our HEP team met to record exercises. And with any exercise shoot, there are bound to be a few mistakes and even a few pranks. Check out the blooper reel pulled together by Embodia’s superstar videographer and editor, Danny Alexander.

This video features our fantastic HEP team - all of whom are Physiotherapy Residents. They collaborate to put together shoot lists (ie: deciding which of infinite exercises to record), then record, edit, upload, tag, and create print-friendly transcripts.

 

Featured in the video: Landyn Quigley (check him out on IG here), Sukhbir Manku (check him out on IG here), and Nora Thorpe.

Alright, now that you’ve had a peak behind the scenes at our exercise shoots, we’ll highlight a few of the most shared exercise videos on Embodia in 2022.

 

Top 5 Most Prescribed Exercises 

  1. Child's Pose by Pelvic Health Solutions 
  2. Obturator Internus Stretch by Carolyn Vandyken
  3. Double Leg Bridges by Darryl Yardley 
  4. Umbrella Breaths by Julie Wiebe
  5. Pallof Press - Lateral Lunge Isometric by Embodia Team 

Here’s a sample of a final product from an exercise shoot this year. Number 5 on the most prescribed exercise of the year, Pallof Press - Lateral Lunge Isometric featuring Sukhbir Manku.

 

 

Top 2 Most Shared Patient Education

We love patient education, that’s why it has its own section on Embodia, letting you easily share education with your patients. Here are the two patient educations that were have shared the most in 2022:

  1. Pain Education 1: Understanding Your Alarm System: this is actually part of a FREE resource package ‘Pain Education for Patients’ by Carolyn Vandyken. Carolyn explains the complex topic of pain in easy-to-follow videos that can be shared with your patients using Embodia. You can find this free Resource Package on Embodia in English here and in French here.

  2. The Female Pelvic Floor by Pelvic Health Solutions: this written and image-based piece of education explains the female pelvic floor. It includes an overview of the anatomy, the five key functions of the pelvic floor, and how to locate the muscles of the pelvic floor.

 

Top 3 Most Used Questionnaires/Outcome Measures

Questionnaires on Embodia are survey-like forms that you can send to your patient to fill out as part of the consult. Questionnaires, like everything else on Embodia, are sent via the secure Embodia portal that is HIPAA, PHIPA, and PIPEDA compliant.

Outcome measures are included under the umbrella of questionnaires, and while you can build your own on Embodia, we also provide a large number of templates that you can use.

Here are the top 3 most used questionnaires in 2022:

  1. The Dass 21
  2. The Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia
  3. The Pain Catastrophizing Scale

 

Biggest New Releases on Embodia

 

1. Embodia’s New In-House Telerehab Platform

As soon as we found out that Zoom might revert back to the 40-minute limit on all basic accounts (such as the one Embodia was using for one-on-one telerehab), we started working away to bring you a fully compliant (PHIPA, PIPEDA, HIPAA) telerehab platform so that you may continue delivering telerehab on Embodia at no additional cost.

So on July 15, 2022, when Zoom made the big announcement, we were READY! And just like that our in-house telerehab platform was born!

Adjusting to the new platform after 2.5 years of Zoom hasn’t always been a smooth ride (for any of us) and we would like to thank those of you who have accompanied us on the journey. Learning and innovation (of which we are big fans) are not always a smooth ride.

You can learn more about our in-house telerehab in this guide.

2. Chart Features to Save Time

We added the following features and improvements to make charting easier and more efficient for you!

  • Repeated movement chart templates
  • Body charts that can be drawn on by both patients and practitioners
  • The ability for patients to securely upload their own content and documents to Embodia such as imaging results, referrals, and paperwork. Learn how it works here.
  • See previous chart entries: you can pull up previous chart entries directly in the chart note you are working on. For example, in the Subjective section, you can pull up all previous Subjective entries for that patient. No need to have multiple charts open - you can see them all on one screen.

3. Added SMS Capabilities for Appointment Reminders

4. Embodia's Alternative to Fax

Faxes are outdated (do we really need to say that?!) so we built a better way to send and receive patient information to external sources. Learn more about the alternative to (e)-fax feature here.

5. Auto-Reply Feature for Messages

You can now set up automated replies to patient messages, such as sending out-of-office replies when you're on vacation. Learn more about auto-replies here and watch this short video to learn more about Embodia’s two-way messaging features.

6. Set the Time you Want a Questionnaire to Be Sent

You can automatically preset questionnaires and outcome measures to be sent:

    • When the consult is scheduled
    • After the consult, or
    • A certain number of hours before the consult

Learn how it works here.

7. Supervision Feature for Students

If you supervise students, residents, or PTAs you can now enable the supervision feature on Embodia so that you can review and sign off on their charts.

8. Superbills 🦸‍♀️

This feature is for all of the US PTs using Embodia. Easily enable the Superbill feature and set up diagnosis and procedure codes. Plus, we built a service default feature so the right codes will populate on your invoices (automation is amazing, right?!) Learn more about Superbills in this short video.

9. Waitlist

We added a waitlist feature!  Manage your waitlist and notify your patients of a cancellation that matches their availability. Watch this short video to learn more.

10. Direct billing

Use direct billing to insurers via TELUS eClaims. This feature integrates seamlessly with the Embodia billing features, resulting in significant time savings and less administrative hassle.

Now that you know a little more about our biggest new releases of 2022, let’s see what education you, our community liked! 

 

Continuing Education on Embodia

 

Top 5 Most Popular Free Member Courses in 2022

Pelvic content topped the list this year. While the free for Embodia Member course library includes courses across every area of practice, the people have spoken - pelvic was most popular. So popular in fact that we built a landing page to outline all things Pelvic that Embodia offers, including digital bladder diaries, pelvic exercises and patient education, and of course, courses!

 

Here are the Top 5 Most Popular Free Member Courses:

  1. An Introduction to Pelvic Girdle Pain and Coccydynia
  2. Resource Package - Female and Male Pelvic Pain
  3. Resource Package - Female and Male Urinary Incontinence
  4. An Introduction to Scapulothoracic Assessment
  5. An Introduction to Shoulder Sensitivity & Adhesive Capsulitis

 

Top 5 Most Popular Premium Courses in 2022

  1. How to Measure and Treat Central Sensitization in the Clinic
  2. A Modern-Day Approach to Inflammation and Low Back Pain
  3. Evidence-Informed Practices for Individualized Prescription of Ankle-Foot Orthoses
  4. Prenatal Physiotherapy: Building Maternal Capacity through the Trimesters
  5. THE Biopsychosocial Bundle

 

Top 3 Most Popular Free-for-Everyone Courses

  1. APTEI: BLAME: Flatulence, Tickling & WADs
  2. Expand Your Physiotherapy Respiratory Assessment
  3. Foundational Aquatic Therapy

 

Top 3 Webinars Hosted in 2022

On Embodia, we refer to all live online sessions as Webinars and can be found under Webinars; whereas all on-demand courses are called courses and can be found under Embodia Academy. Here’s a screenshot of Embodia that shows these two distinct areas on the platform:

Embodia Academy vs Embodia's Webinars

Here are the top 3 webinars we hosted in 2022:

  1. Weird and Wonderful Strategies that EVERY Physio Should Know to Effectively Treat LBP with Carolyn Vandyken and colleagues. This was a sold-out series with 200+ on the waitlist. But not to worry! If you missed the live event, you can find the recordings on Embodia Academy here.

  2. Going Deeper - An Integral Approach to the Biopsychosocial Care Model. The recording from this live webinar can be found in this Free for Embodia Member course.

  3. BPPV - Becoming a Rock Star at Treating the Lateral Canal. This popular webinar used a case study to develop a step-by-step approach to improve your confidence and outcomes in treating BPPV. The recording from this live webinar can be found in this Free for Embodia Member course.

We’ve wrapped up our webinar schedule for 2022 but we’ve started to release 2023 webinars and many more to come! If you have any requests, please let us know!

 

CEUs - It’s Complicated

We frequently get asked whether our courses are approved for Continuing Education Units or Credits (CEUs or CECs). 

The answer - it depends.

It depends on a lot of factors: your profession and geographical location being two of the biggest.

In Canada, there isn’t a formal CEU approval process and therefore our entire course and webinar libraries count towards your learning hours. The majority of courses on Embodia come with a certificate of completion so you can add these to your professional portfolio - speaking of which, Embodia maintains a professional portfolio for you that you can refer to at any time. 

In 2022, we started working with a CEU provider to get some courses approved in the US and South Africa!

We also added some CEU-specific features including the ability to add your license number and display the number of CEUs the course is approved for (based on your jurisdiction) on course certificates! Click here to learn more about this feature.

Courses Currently Approved for US CEUs:

 

We’ve also started to go through the CEU approval process with the South Africa Society of Physiotherapists (SASP).

Here’s the list of courses currently approved by SASP:

 

Top 3 Most Popular Blogs

These blogs were selected based on Google Analytics by analyzing a few key metrics including most views, lowest bounce rate, and longest time on the page (i.e., enjoying the contents of the blog).

  1. 9 Tips to Pass the Physiotherapy Competency Exam and Succeed in Life. Read it here
  2. Dermoneuromodulation - Can It Change Your Manual Therapy Practice? Read it here
  3. The 6 Stages of Toilet Meditation With Shelly Prosko. Read it here

To honour the accomplishments of Black Canadians, we published a blog in February to celebrate Black Futures/Histories Month - Black Excellence in Canadian Physiotherapy in the Face of Inequity. Click here to read it.

 

Quote by Ruchika Tulshyan

 

That’s a Wrap

That’s all from us this year. 

You, our incredible community have been amazing. We appreciate everything that you do for your patients, your loved ones, and your community, and for your continued support for Embodia. Thank you.

We appreciate every feature request you send us, all the feedback left in courses, and your participation in our continuing education, and engagement on social media. Your input continues to help us improve Embodia to better serve you and your patients. 

Best wishes and happiness to you and your families over the festive season. We look forward to a successful 2023.

From all of us here at Embodia! 🎅

Subscribe to Our Blog

* indicates required
What kind of emails are you interested in?
© 2024 Embodia