Our leadership team continues to monitor the COVID-19 situation on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. Our promise to you is to keep a safe and clean environment for those who are in need of our services the most. We understand this is a very difficult time for everyone.

Our Bozeman clinic is OPEN in agreement with the March 24th guidance of the MT Office of the Governor. Physical Therapy is considered an essential critical infrastructure. As a healthcare facility, we are currently one of the few options for those who are suffering due to cancelled surgeries, chronic pain, and other issues during this unprecedented time where healthcare has suddenly become a precious commodity.

In the state of Montana, we have direct access, which means a patient can be treated without needing a doctor’s prescription. For insurance reimbursement, there are several payers who have not yet acknowledged this state law: EBMS, several Allegiance employer-based plans, some out of state BCBS plans. Call our front office team and we can check your plan for you.

Our goal is to make sure to we are available for our patients and anyone else who needs us at this time while options remain limited. We are offering virtual physical therapy appointments for those who are unable to come into the Bozeman or Manhattan clinics.

We have implemented COVID-19 policies to further increase precautions and prevention All policies apply to both staff, patients and anyone entering our facility. Thank you to all for your patience and accommodation with these polices.

We are screening every patient who enters our Bozeman clinic with the following 5 questions:

• Are you currently sick for any reason, esp. cold, cough, fever and taking fever-reducing medications?
• Did you bring a visitor with you?
• Have you been in contact with anyone with who has tested positive for COVID-19?
• Have you traveled recently to a CDC-designated US community spread state?(click the + sign to expand the States’s community spread status)
• Have you recently traveled to a CDC-designated Warning Level 3 country?

If anyone answers, Yes to any of the above 5 questions at check-in, we reschedule their clinic appointment with a virtual PT visit option, or reschedule their in-clinic appointment as needed, or after a 14-day period, or once any illness symptoms are full resolved. 

Here are our other COVID-19 policies in place for our staff and patients:

1. If you are sick for any reason right now, with a fever, cough or are sneezing, then we ask you to not return for in-clinic appointments until your symptoms fully resolve and you are not taking any fever-reducing medications. Virtual physical therapy appointments are available to you.
2. If you travel to high-risk regions per the CDC, inside the US with any specified community transmission or outside of the US that have a Level 3 Travel Health Notice (widespread, ongoing transmission), please postpone attending in-clinic appointments until 14 days after your return date to  the Gallatin Valley.  This requested 14-day waiting period exists for symptom-free patients. Virtual physical therapy appointments are available to you.
3. Visitors are not allowed to attend in-clinic appointments with any patient (unless the patient is a minor). Please leave friends and/or family members at home! No one is allowed in the waiting room other than our scheduled patient. Your visit will be rescheduled if you have brought someone to your appointment or the visitor will be asked to wait in a vehicle in the parking lot or to make other arrangements to be picked up or return to another location. If a patient is a minor, the only allowed visitor is a guardian and the 5 question policy is in place for both the minor and the guardian. 
4. We already have an existing best practice of frequent hand and wrist hygiene before and after each patient encounter, sanitizing and disinfection of equipment, all common areas, and hard surfaces several times per day throughout both our Bozeman and Manhattan clinic locations. We have increased our vigilance in these efforts for all staff members and following CDC guidelines and are using CDC- specified cleaning products. 
5. We have reduced our patient and staff levels in our Bozeman clinic on both our main and loft levels to practice social distancing guidelines. Our providers who are in the clinic are working a staggered work schedule to provide for social distancing guidelines.
6. We have chosen to temporarily close our Manhattan clinic from 3/24 to 4/3 to provide for additional social distancing measures. We will make the decision to re-open our Manhattan clinic on a week by week basis as the COVID-19 situation resolves. Re-opening updates will be posted to our Manhattan office Facebook page.

Virtual Physical Therapy Appointments  Our physical therapy providers are offering secure and HIPAA-compliant virtual physical appointments for anyone not able to attend in-clinic appointments. It’s as simple as clicking on an email link from us.

Call our Bozeman office at 406-556-0562 or by email at info@excelptmt.com to schedule a virtual PT visit. We are offering discounted self-pay pricing of $70 per virtual visit pricing for anyone without payer coverage. Typical virtual visits are about 30-45 minutes depending on your specific need and treatment plan. We have a secure payment link easily accessible from our website to take care of payment arrangements for these visits.

Medicare calls these “e-visits” and is covering them for established patients only at this time. BCBS is offering coverage for virtual PT appointments for new and established patients and is waiving co-pays and deductible cost-sharing requirements. We are closely monitoring all payer activity and responses for telehealth visit coverage on a daily basis. Please call your insurance company if you have questions for virtual (telehealth) physical therapy visit coverage or feel free to call our office at 406-556-0562.

How Does a Virtual PT Visit Work? A virtual pt visit is a secure HIPAA compliant video conference appointment where our front office or pt provider will email you a waiting room link to click on and join the appointment at your scheduled time from your favorite device, computer, phone or tablet. You are already dressed in easy to move or exercise clothing and your office or household does not have Netflix or similar live streaming apps open or in use. Our front office team will email you the easy instructions and link for you to join your appointment with your PT provider.

We also use SwitchBack Health to deliver and manage your home physical therapy exercise program during our virtual pt visit just like we do for in-clinic appointments. Switchback Health is a web-based application designed to help ensure you are doing your prescribed exercises correctly and with the correct frequency and technique designed by your physical therapist. See our Switchback FAQ to learn more about this secure, cloud-based tool our pt provider use for our in-clinic and virtual pt visits. Our team will set you up with your free Switchback account set up and email you a link as well if you and your provider choose to use this tool.

Why are physical therapy appointments, in-clinic or virtual, are valuable now and beyond this pandemic situation?:

• Physical therapy is more effective, less invasive and less expensive than traditional health care treatment options.
• Patients who get physical therapy right away are less likely to need specialist appointments, surgery, MRIs, and other expensive diagnostic procedures. And they spend less, an average of $4,500 less over the course of care.
• Physical therapy patients are less likely to need prescription pain killers.
• The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine found that PT patients are 35% less likely to be prescribed opioids, even if they only come for one visit. Since opioids are highly addictive and don’t treat pain – they only mask it.
• Physical therapy care can reduce the number of patients that are going to doctor’s offices and to the hospital for ER visits for musculoskeletal ailments. This is crucial at this time to help reduce exposure to the coronavirus and so that our community healthcare providers are free to help those in the most need of COVID-19 treatment.

We are here for you! As always, your physical therapist is available through email or phone and we encourage you to communicate with them regarding your care. Our PT team is able to schedule a virtual visit for you directly as well. Reach out to our front office team with any questions at info@excelptmt.com too or to schedule a virtual pt visit too.

David Coletta  david@excelptmt.com
Jason Lunden  jason@excelptmt.com 
Megan Peach  megan@excelptmt.com 
Matt Heyliger  matt@excelptmt.com
Jackie Oliver  jackie@excelptmt.com 
Bobby Bemis  bobby@excelptmt.com
Matt Schumacher  matts@excelptmt.com
Megan Kemp  megank@excelptmt.com
Nikki Kimball  nikki@excelptmt.com
Aj Sobrilsy  aj@excelptmt.com

Please be safe, stay active and healthy.  We are here for you as we navigate this situation. Let us know if you have any questions.

Bozeman team: 406-556-0562
info@excelptmt.com

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