Welcome to Tapt Health

I am excited to announce the launch of Tapt Health, a Documentation Copilot for Rehab Professionals!

It has been one year since I set out on a mission-driven entrepreneurial journey in the Musculoskeletal (MSK) rehab domain. I have a rare bone disorder that has led to 24 orthopedic surgeries, and consistent high-quality rehab care has been essential to my active lifestyle. I’ve seen the limitations of traditional care pathways firsthand, so I’m incredibly motivated to improve MSK rehab care for the general population.

At first, I studied how to leverage my experience with novel connected fitness technologies to reimagine physical therapy (PT); recent progress in electromagnetic resistance and computer vision could enable more precise rehab for patients. However, after speaking with numerous PTs and diving into the economics of care delivery, I discovered that the lack of accessible innovation in rehab care was the direct consequence of a reimbursement system that prioritizes rehab quantity over rehab quality.

Therapists are compensated based on the number of minutes a patient spends in treatment, and many payers enable overlapping patient treatment. Reimbursements have been dropping each year, and clinics are forced to increase the number of patients a PT treats each day. This has caused a spike in therapist burnout. Physical Therapists now spend about one to three hours per day completing documentation, and staff turnover is more than twice the healthcare average.

It is frustrating that rehab therapy professionals are financially squeezed when studies continue to demonstrate the economic value of non-invasive MSK rehab care over surgical pathways. While we cannot change MSK care incentives overnight, we can work to develop technologies that improve rehab professionals’ efficiency within existing reimbursement structures.

At Tapt Health we are mission driven to develop:

• Technology that enables therapists to keep their eyes, ears, and hands on their patients instead of their notes.

• Technology that enables therapists to finish their notes during working-hours, not after-hours.

• Technology that better quantifies the rehabilitation value that therapists provide their patients.
  
  
  

I wish to thank my co-founder and friend, Alex Zamoshchin, a technical visionary who has brought our vision to life. I want to thank South Park Commons, the “-1 to 0” incubator that first believed in this vision when accepting me into the community, and then supported this vision when accepting us into the Founder Fellowship. Finally, I want to thank the many physical therapists and early clinical partners who have been generous with their time and open minded to trialing new technology at their clinics.

I’ll be writing much more about Tapt Health and the state of MSK rehab in the coming months.