Three numbers from one study.
The figure on our home page — that patients report far more home-exercise adherence than their therapists observe — comes from a single peer-reviewed study. This page states what it found, and what it does not support.
- 39%Said they did it
24 of 61 patients self-reported complete adherence
95% CI: 27–52% - 16%Their therapist agreed
10 of 61 were perceived by their physiotherapist as completely adherent
95% CI: 8–28% - 15%Could actually show it
9 of 61 could accurately recall and demonstrate the prescribed program
95% CI: 7–26%
The source
Peek K, Carey M, Mackenzie L, Sanson-Fisher R. Patient adherence to an exercise program for chronic low back pain measured by patient-report, physiotherapist-perception and observational data. Physiotherapy Theory and Practice. 2019;35(12):1304–1313. doi:10.1080/09593985.2018.1474402
What this does not prove
- It is one study, not a body of evidence. 61 patients, six practices, 15 physiotherapists. A cross-sectional observational design, not a trial.
- The population is chronic low back pain. We do not claim these percentages hold across post-operative knees, shoulders, or any other caseload. The direction is what generalises; the precise figures are specific to this cohort.
- Therapist perception is a judgement, not a measurement. The 16% is what clinicians believed, not independently verified adherence. That is the point — neither number was measured, which is the problem this study documents.
- It says nothing about whether our product improves adherence. We make no outcome claim. What the study establishes is that the self-reported record is unreliable — which is a claim about measurement, not about treatment.
Why it matters for billing
Remote therapeutic monitoring is billed on adherence data. In most tools that data is the patient marking an exercise complete. The third figure above is the uncomfortable one: fifteen percent of patients could demonstrate the program they had been given. The rest were, at best, reporting on something they half-remembered.
A monitoring record built from taps inherits that error. A record built from observed movement does not.
Find out what hybrid care would mean for your clinic.
Twenty minutes. We look at your caseload and payer mix, where hybrid care would free up therapist time, whether remote therapeutic monitoring (RTM) is worth billing, and how your current adherence data would hold up if someone asked you to defend it. If the numbers do not work for your practice, we will tell you that on the call.
On the call we cover
- Whether your patient mix clears the monitoring thresholds
- What your current adherence record would survive
- Conservative revenue math against your own numbers
- What a scoped pilot would involve