Spend more time with the patients who need you most
Provide better care with orthopedic expertise on demand
for Practices
Created by orthopedic physicians and physical therapists to help other doctors provide better care
50% of medical interventions for MSK conditions fail to create a positive outcome for patients. That’s a lot of administration, imaging, office visits, surgeries, prescriptions and rehabilitation without making patients better.
The reason for this is that 46% of MSK injuries are incorrectly triaged. Why? Because primary care physicians don’t have access to musculoskeletal expertise when they need it, so they refer their patients to the best specialist they can – who may not be the right specialist for the patient’s condition.
That’s why Upswing was created. To give family practice doctors everywhere expert orthopedic tools and on-demand access to sports medicine specialists who can help intake staff sort patients into the proper level of care – and the right specialist. This allows doctors to focus more time on the patients who need them most, knowing that their patients are getting the right care from the right specialist and avoiding unnecessary interventions.
Accurate MSK Expertise
Made by board certified orthopedic doctors to deliver differential diagnoses based on patient-reported symptoms, so your staff always has a second opinion available.
Learn more about how Upswing gives practices access to MSK expertise on demand
Lower Costs
The average cost of a typical episode of care for an MSK injury is $458. The average Upswing cost per episode is only $60 and usually doesn’t require in-office visits, imaging or doctors time to create good patient outcomes.
Better Access to Care
Patients love being able to access a medical professional from anywhere, anytime, when they or their loved ones are experiencing pain. Using the Upswing triage app, they never have to wait and worry about what’s wrong – and a live Health Coach can connect them to your office if needed.
Add over 60 years of orthopedic expertise to your practice – at no cost
Available 24/7 to every person in your office – and to your patients
If you could access the expertise of a team of leading board-certified orthopedic physicians whenever you wanted to, at no cost, would you? How much more confident would you be that your patients are getting the right care if your intake staff could access this same expertise? How much more time would you have to focus on the patients who truly need your focus if you knew that your patients could be assessed using this expertise and even get physical therapist designed treatments they could do at home – and speak directly with a certified athletic trainer throughout their rehabilitation?
Upswing was designed by doctors who understand the pressure that doctors face to balance better care for patients with the time demands of their patient population.
Our AI-powered application pools the collective experience of a team of top orthopedic specialists to provide you with expert MSK second opinions on-demand based on a patient’s symptoms.
Once diagnosed, your patients can often treat themselves at home using our video library of physical therapist developed exercises and can speak to a certified athletic trainer within minutes if they have questions. These Upswing Coaches also check in with your patient throughout their rehabilitation to make sure everything is going well – and can notify you if the patient is not progressing.
Learn how Upswing can maximize your team’s effectiveness and help you focus your time where it’s needed.
Reduce practice costs
(while improving patient outcomes)
Better diagnosis and faster access to care reduces costs and time burden on doctors
Right now, the way most MSK conditions are diagnosed and treated wastes time and money – and requires patients to wait in pain for answers.
People are required to visit their primary care doctor, then go to a specialist who may order additional xrays or MRIs before typically providing them with simple exercises they can do on their own. This process costs employers $458 per episode on average, in addition to days of lost work. For employees it usually means living with pain while waiting for appointments, getting child care and asking for time off work.
60% of musculoskeletal injuries can be treated with simple physical therapy exercises at home.
That’s why Upswing’s team of orthopedic doctors developed an AI-powered app that accurately assesses the majority of MSK problems, identifying patients who are unlikely to need a doctor and providing them with physical therapist developed exercises that they can do at home. For those who would still like a medical consultation – or whose symptoms require a specialist’s intervention – our Upswing Coaches are available on demand, seven days a week from 8am to 8pm and are certified medical professionals who can answer questions or set up a telemedicine appointment with one of our orthopedic physicians. This process costs employers $60 per episode on average and usually requires no days away from work – and no office visits or appointments with doctors, allowing them to focus on the patients who truly need them.
Learn how Upswing can lower your practices costs while improving your patients’ access to medical care.
Faster access to care drives up patient satisfaction
Wait times are negatively correlated with satisfaction – but also the perception of physician competence
Everyone knows that long wait times lead to low patient satisfaction scores. But studies* have also shown that they also reduce a patient’s confidence in the care provider and lower their overall perception of the quality of care they get. Which is why providing immediate access to care to patients who are in pain and need answers now is not only the right decision for your patients, but also is good for your practice.
Typically the first thing people want to know after an MSK injury is how serious it is and whether or not they need to see a doctor. In the current healthcare environment, many people wait for days for answers, first waiting for an appointment with a primary care physician,an Xray or an orthopedic specialist just to find out what’s wrong… and that’s before a treatment program starts.
With Upswing’s app, your patients can get answers immediately based on their symptoms – and follow up with a video call to a Health Coach minutes later. Since most musculskelatal injuries can be treated at home, their Health Coach can check in with them throughout their recovery process, providing detailed downloadable video based rehabilitation exercises they can do on their own. And for patients who need more, their Health Coach will put them in contact with you or the right specialist for their condition via a video call consult or an in-office appointment.
*https://www.ajmc.com/view/wait-times-patient-satisfaction-scores-and-the-perception-of-care
Learn more about how Upswing can give your patients immediate answers and access to care without the wait.
for Practices
Frequently Asked Questions
Upswing can structure practice plans several ways (see the next question for details), but all of them result in substantial cost savings for most practices.
We can structure employee plans in one of several ways.
A fee-per-episode model allows employers only to pay when their employees use Upswing Health.
For some larger employers, Upswing is happy to offer a percentage of savings model, where Upswing is paid a percentage of total claims costs saved
For many employers, a flat fee per employee model makes the most sense.
Over 50% of MSK injuries can and should be treated at home using physical therapist developed exercises that most people can do on their own without help.
Additionally, over 46% of MSK injuries are mis-diagnosed (typically because a medical professional with orthopedic expertise was not available to help diagnose the condition). This mis-diagnosis is a key contributor to the 50% failure rate of MSK medical interventions to solve the intended problem.
All of this together has created the largest single employer healthcare cost, especially when lost productivity of workdays spent at doctors offices and long recoveries from surgeries are factored in. Add to this unnecessary prescriptions, MRIs, Xrays and weekly physical therapist appointments and it’s easy to see that if patients could get a better diagnosis and at home treatment options, everyone would save a lot of time and money.
Upswing was designed by a team of orthopedic physicians and physical therapists to solve exactly this problem.
Upswing Coaches are a patient’s first point of contact with a broad network of orthopedic specialists, and they are all certified medical professionals in their own right, specializing in soft tissue, muscle, bone and joint injuries.
Most Upswing Coaches are Certified Athletic Trainers (the sports medicine specialists who run out on the field when someone is injured during a professional football game). Occasionally a health coach might be a certified Physical Therapist or another orthopedic specialist. In all cases, they can help answer questions about symptoms, injuries, treatments and can create referrals and appointments with other specialists including doctors, physical therapists and orthopedic surgeons.
Have Questions?
Contact us today to learn more.
For employees
Upswing Health gives qualifying employees immediate access to care on demand while lowering healthcare costs for employers. To learn more, or to ask your human resources department to offer Upswing Health, send them a link to our For Employers page here.
For insurers
If you’re looking for innovative ways to provide better access to care for members at lower cost, bundling Upswing with your Exchange plans for active people who are most likely to use physical therapy or sports medicine services is an effective and easy upgrade to your MSK clinical pathways. Find out more here.
For provider
Ever wish you had a musculoskeletal specialist on staff to provide expert guidance on orthopedic issues and give you more time to focus on the patients who need you the most? Upswing Health was built by orthopedic doctors to help you manage the 65% of MSK office visits that can be treated at home. Learn more.