Team Rehab’s AI-Powered Approach to Streamlining Compliance

"On a day-to-day basis, our goal is that therapists don’t have to worry about compliance every time they do something—we want it to be as easy and intrinsically motivating as possible just to do the right thing—quickly,” says Joshua Sackleh, Compliance Training Specialist for Team Rehab, a rapidly growing network of over 140 physical therapy clinics across five states. 

Team Rehab’s unique ownership model, where clinic directors and even administrative staff can buy into their clinics, has fueled its expansion since its founding in 2001. But as the organization grew, so did the complexity of maintaining consistent documentation and compliance practices across its many locations. The burden of these responsibilities often fell on the shoulders of clinic directors, pulling them away from their primary mission: patient care.

“We received some feedback from audits that made it clear we needed a more solid structure to drive compliance,” Joshua said. Tasked with improving compliance with documentation requirements, Joshua knew that relying on traditional medical record review methods wouldn’t cut it. The organization needed something that could scale with its rapid growth and take the guesswork out of compliance.

A Data-Driven Search for a Partner

Team Rehab had heard whispers about companies using AI to streamline documentation audits and decided to explore the options. Team Rehabilitation searched for the right partner with validated documentation compliance improvement suggestions from a recent audit. Joshua narrowed his options to PredictionHealth and an independent auditing company, providing both with the same baseline documents that had been audited. When Team Rehab compared the feedback from both companies, PredictionHealth was the clear winner, with feedback that closely mirrored the previously validated results, while the independent auditing company focused solely on which CPT codes were used and whether or not they included the right modifiers. 

Joshua explains, "While billing with the right modifiers is important, there’s this whole level of medical necessity and making sure that you’re documenting with enough information that is the gateway to whether or not those modifiers even matter.”

Moving the Needle with AI-Powered Compliance

PredictionHealth quickly became an extension of Joshua’s team. With PredictionHealth’s AI-driven tools, Team Rehabilitation created a system that would lift the burden of compliance from clinic directors and therapists, allowing them to focus on caring for patients.

Team Rehab started with aggregate data to identify the organization’s most significant pain points and areas with the greatest opportunity for improvement. Joshua and his colleagues then tailored training based on this data to help therapists correct their compliance gaps.  

Joshua and his team also collaborated with PredictionHealth’s Customer Success team, led and staffed by licensed physical therapists, to create and validate “short keys,” predefined text snippets that therapists could use to ensure their documentation was thorough and compliant. 

“When you look at our overall scores, you can see the month that we put the short keys in place because our average compliance score for the entire company moves significantly,” Joshua said. 

The results were clear: compliance scores improved, jumping over 9% upon implementing the first short key, and therapists found the documentation process faster and easier. 

Better One-on-Ones, Better Compliance

Following the analysis of aggregate data and the introduction of short keys, Team Rehab started leveraging individual scorecards for each therapist, an automated function of PredictionHealth’s Practice Intel analytics solution that helped scale Team Rehab’s compliance strategy. The scorecards identified opportunities for training where individuals were struggling and powered one-on-one meetings that continued to yield improvement in compliance scores over time. 

Practice Intel also helps Team Rehab better understand therapists' documentation habits by tracking metrics like time-to-sign-off. Joshua says that when they hear that a therapist is overwhelmed or spending a lot of extra time at home completing documentation, this data gives them visibility into what’s happening so they can intervene and prevent therapist burnout. 

Joshua says this is important because it also impacts compliance as the duration between a patient visit and time-to-sign-off increases, compliance scores have been shown to decrease. 

Average compliance score vs. hours to first sign-off based on aggregate data from the PredictionHealth database

Partnership Magic

Joshua says the PredictionHealth partnership has been key to improving documentation compliance and therapist efficiency. 

“I’ve never had a customer experience like this with any other company or vendor I’ve ever worked with in my entire life—the responsiveness and support from PredictionHealth is insane,” Joshua says. 

He explains that response time isn’t the only factor that stands out to him; the level of collaboration and insight between the two organizations drives the partnership. 

Team Rehabilitation’s CEO, Nick Weber, echoes Joshua’s thoughts, “We tend to do the best business with organizations that have overlapping goals and are great to work with. PredictionHealth fits both molds.” 

What’s Next

The partnership with PredictionHealth has been instrumental in helping Team Rehab navigate the complexities of compliance and documentation as the company continues to grow. The success of the implementation has not only improved compliance but has also provided a scalable solution that can adapt as the company expands. Team Rehab is now implementing PredictionHealth’s AI scribing solution, Sidekick. Joshua says that initial reports from Team Rehab therapists are that Sidekick is “magical,” saying, “It’s a huge time saver because you can record a conversation, and it will generate what you want.”