Eliminating Documentation Headaches With Jake Michalski Of Comprehend PT

[00:00:00] Right now, AI isn't able to think creatively like a human would. It's more of an aid to

[00:00:06] help you bounce ideas off of it. I use it every day for that. Hey, I'm thinking about this. What

[00:00:11] are your thoughts? And I asked the AI that and it spits back, here's four things. And sometimes

[00:00:16] it's useful, sometimes it's not, but every once in a while two of those things are like,

[00:00:19] oh, interesting. Double down on that. Tell me more. What do you mean by that?

[00:00:23] Welcome. You've entered the Physical Therapy Owners Club podcast, where your host, Nathan Shields,

[00:00:32] and other successful PT owners and leaders share their experience and insights on how to build

[00:00:37] successful PT businesses. They'll share the stories of their paths to success and show you

[00:00:42] how you can also obtain greater freedom and more profits from your business. That's what the PT

[00:00:47] Owners Club is all about. Greater freedom and more profits. There's plenty of room for you

[00:00:52] as well. So come on in and join the club. Hello, and welcome to the Physical Therapy Owners Club

[00:01:01] podcast. I'm your host, Nathan Shields. And I've got a good friend and a business associate who

[00:01:07] I'm really excited to introduce to the PT world if you haven't met him already. His name is

[00:01:11] Jake Mahalsky, founder and CEO of Comprehend PT, an AI company that is helping physical

[00:01:19] therapists overcome the biggest issue that physical therapists have. It's the biggest headache.

[00:01:25] It always is ranked number one or number two on any survey as to the biggest problem related

[00:01:29] to physical therapy outside of reimbursements, and that is documentation. Just a pain in the butt.

[00:01:35] It just takes so much time. And Jake is leveraging AI to tackle that. So first of all,

[00:01:40] thanks for joining me today, Jake. I appreciate it. Absolutely, Nathan. Thanks for having me on.

[00:01:44] Super excited to be here. Super excited to talk about what we're doing, but also kind

[00:01:46] of the more broad PT industry as a whole and how hopefully things are changing and documentation,

[00:01:52] the burden that it is, is going to be diminished soon. Totally. Man, that would be such a relief.

[00:01:57] I do have to say at the forefront, Jake has asked me to be part of a, what do you call me?

[00:02:01] Not a board of directors, but I'm board of advisors or something like that. Advisors,

[00:02:04] yeah. An advisor to his company. You're on my advisor board for the company. Yeah. Yeah,

[00:02:09] he reached out to me a few months ago, late 2023, just picking my brain and asked if I

[00:02:16] had any guidance for them. And man, just in the last what five months that I've known you,

[00:02:21] five months ago, you didn't really even have anybody using your product. And now you've got

[00:02:25] a number of people using the product and getting feedback and making quick changes,

[00:02:29] all that new company startups kind of stuff. Right?

[00:02:32] Yes. It's fun to still be responsive to our users. Right. There's a lot of big conglomerates

[00:02:37] out there and as you grow, it's a lot harder to be responsive to users, but we're still in

[00:02:40] a phase where every time like we customer support, it's like, I'm happy about it. I'm

[00:02:44] excited to hear what people have to say. I'm excited to make a change because you're helping

[00:02:48] me make it better. We're still nimble enough where all the feedback actually matters.

[00:02:52] That's cool. So tell me a little bit about what your observations are now that you are

[00:02:59] in the PT space. You've come from, correct me if I'm wrong, you come from tech world,

[00:03:05] right? And we can get into your story a little bit later, but as you've

[00:03:09] changed from the tech world to see what's happening in the physical therapy space,

[00:03:12] what are your initial ideas and thoughts about the physical therapy industry as a whole?

[00:03:17] Yeah. So initial observations are that the PT industry is pretty behind. And I just look at

[00:03:23] some of the softwares out there, like the WebPTs and other EMRs that are mainstream

[00:03:29] and they kind of look like they were made in the 90s at times.

[00:03:32] Yeah. WebPT has their soap 2.0, which is really slick, but a lot of people are still

[00:03:37] using that soap 1.0, which is like, looks like it's from the 90s. Even like other

[00:03:42] softwares and other things that we're seeing, chiropractors are kind of like the same.

[00:03:46] They're using outdated software that works for them, which is really cool,

[00:03:52] but they don't get to take part in like the next wave of evolution, right?

[00:03:56] Some of these softwares are still hosted and this is broader medical as well.

[00:03:59] They're hosted on site. They're not using the cloud and they're using old machines

[00:04:03] that are kind of slow and they're not all user friendly. And so it's really fun because

[00:04:07] that's a huge opportunity for us to make things better, right? It's not like,

[00:04:12] for instance, surgeons are using potentially like an Epic and Epic is like a more advanced DHR

[00:04:18] that has a streamlined UI that is on the bleeding edge. Whereas a lot of what we're

[00:04:22] seeing in the PT space is a lot of the EMRs are just behind. And so there's a lot

[00:04:27] of room for innovation growth, which is where we come in.

[00:04:30] Why do you think that? Why are we so behind? Because I've said that for the past five years,

[00:04:33] like PT is behind like a decade or two. And it's just like, why are we so behind? What is it?

[00:04:39] Is there not enough money in the industry? Do we not care as providers for that stuff?

[00:04:46] Yeah, I have a few opinions on this that kind of all stem from insurance reimbursement,

[00:04:51] right? And so in my head, if insurance is reimbursing more, then you'd see PT spending

[00:04:57] more to optimize their time to have better. So, right? Yeah, if you could spend a thousand bucks

[00:05:03] a month on an EMR, you'd have a pretty good EMR. But because insurance reimbursement isn't

[00:05:07] high enough, you don't have the margin to spend a thousand bucks per user on an EMR.

[00:05:12] And so I think it all trickles down from that. I think that's the core problem.

[00:05:15] But I don't know, there's a few different things at play.

[00:05:18] The PTs, yeah, they're content with what they have, but it's because they don't know

[00:05:23] what's out there and what they could have. There isn't room in the EMR space to kind of be bleeding

[00:05:28] edge and do all this fun stuff because AI engineers are super expensive and whatnot.

[00:05:33] So there's a lot of things at play, but I think it all stems from

[00:05:36] insurance reimbursement being too low.

[00:05:38] Physical therapists as a whole, from what I've seen, they don't like change a lot.

[00:05:44] They're not the most tech savvy. Have you found?

[00:05:46] Yeah. So the people are wildly friendly, super charismatic, love having conversations with them.

[00:05:54] They're great people as a whole, but they want to treat people. That's what I found.

[00:05:58] They want to help people get better. They went into PT not for the money,

[00:06:03] not for anything in particular. They went into PT to help people get better.

[00:06:07] A very altruistic goal. Sometimes you see a doctor. Okay, did you become a doctor

[00:06:10] because you wanted to help people get better or did you do it to make money?

[00:06:14] What we're seeing is PT's got into PT to help people get better. And that's what they want to

[00:06:18] do. They don't want to waste time fumbling through their EMR. They don't want to waste time

[00:06:23] learning a new tool that may or may not help them become more efficient, right?

[00:06:29] They've been burned in the past and so they're focused on their patient,

[00:06:33] focused on helping people get better. And they're amazingly good at it.

[00:06:36] There's so many technical questions where I have like, I'm not illiterate, but

[00:06:40] I can't speak at the same level as our doctor of physical therapy on staff, right? Chris, my cousin,

[00:06:45] he is the doctor of physical therapy. He's the guy that can speak the lingo and know what's

[00:06:49] going on where it's me. It's like, that's not my avenue. I'm here to help you become more

[00:06:54] efficient with AI. And then Chris comes in and he helps me understand what people mean by that.

[00:06:59] So as resistant to change as people might be, as not tech savvy as PT's might be,

[00:07:06] everyone is super friendly, but it's because they want to help people get better.

[00:07:10] That's what we've observed. The beauty of your product is,

[00:07:14] is that it not only solves that headache, but in solving that headache of documentation

[00:07:20] and doing so in a compliant manner, it gives physical therapists more time to

[00:07:25] treat and focus on the patient versus focusing on their documentation, right?

[00:07:31] That's the beauty of leveraging new technology. And as we introduce it and use it more and

[00:07:36] more and more, it should get cheaper over time, but also we get used to using it and

[00:07:41] make it most efficient. Right? And so that's what really excites me about your product is

[00:07:46] not only does it solve a headache for most physical therapists, but it also is going

[00:07:49] to make their time more efficient. Right. 100%. Let them do more of what they love

[00:07:54] and then less of what they don't. We want to make it so you don't like,

[00:07:57] I see a world one day where it's, Hey, let me see my patient all day.

[00:08:02] Then I go home with the other day and that's it. And all of the overhead is taken care of.

[00:08:07] Yeah. Maybe it's a little mic that you wear throughout the whole day. That's listening

[00:08:10] the whole time, but okay. If that's what it takes, so you can just treat all day.

[00:08:14] You don't have to ever lift a finger on a computer type of word on a computer for work.

[00:08:18] I see that as being like the ultimate, like that's where we want to get to.

[00:08:21] And we're going to get you as close to that as we can with our current technology.

[00:08:24] You know, I had fault because I don't think we really explained what exactly your product

[00:08:28] does. We're like five, 10 minutes, 15 minutes into this and I haven't explained what you do,

[00:08:35] but make it really quickly. How are you leveraging AI to solve the documentation headache?

[00:08:39] Yeah. The quick version is what about your phone, your iPad or your laptop

[00:08:43] and you click record in our software and we listen to your visit.

[00:08:47] And then after the visit, you hit our comprehend button and we generate you a note

[00:08:51] and like normal soap note. That's easy. We can do ICD-10. We can do differential diagnosis.

[00:08:54] We can recommend billing codes. We can do all that in our software,

[00:08:58] but what really gets cool is we integrate with EMRs as well.

[00:09:01] And so we're able to look at your EMR, see what fields need to be filled in

[00:09:05] and you click a single button and all of a sudden your note's done in your EMR.

[00:09:09] All you got to do is read it over, make sure it's right. Make sure you agree

[00:09:12] and hit submit. Whereas in the past, it's like you're spending hours

[00:09:15] in your EMR typing all this stuff. Right? So we think it's a huge value add.

[00:09:20] Yeah. So you're leveraging AI for it. I tried Dragon software 30 years ago, 25 years ago

[00:09:27] and it worked okay. But I had to then cut and paste or maybe I sent off my mini cassette

[00:09:32] recording of my transcriptions or dictations over to someone to transcribe it and type it

[00:09:38] out and get it back to me three days later. Whereas using AI to record an initial evaluation

[00:09:44] record or even just recorded dictated note. Right? And then integrating into the EMRs

[00:09:50] to the SOAP as well as with the goals and the measurements and that kind of stuff,

[00:09:55] all filled in for you. Right? Exactly. Dragon is one of our competitors, right? It's the idea

[00:10:00] that yeah, I can do speech to text. What we found in initial testing was it's not very

[00:10:04] accurate. Right? They have the power, Mike, and they'll do speech to text, but they don't

[00:10:08] have the context of physical therapy. They have general medicine and it's just riddled

[00:10:12] with errors. And so if you're going in and fixing those errors, it's almost just as time consuming

[00:10:16] as if I would have tied to myself. If I don't read over the errors, all of a sudden you're

[00:10:20] gonna know that's full of issues. Right? And so I have some clients who get notes from

[00:10:26] doctors that are riddled with errors. And it's like, I know that was written by Dragon.

[00:10:30] And so we solve that by giving AI context like, hey, this is the conversation with

[00:10:34] a physical therapist and their patient. In addition, we passed through a second filter.

[00:10:39] So it's going to reword what was said during the visit in your style, in your tone, using words

[00:10:44] that you've used in the past and it's able to identify, okay, this is a PT specific word.

[00:10:48] Use that specific word and whatnot. And that's the cool thing about AI. Not only is it taking

[00:10:53] what they're saying and integrating it into the EMR, but it is also learning along the way.

[00:10:59] And correct me if I'm wrong, but the providers that are six months into,

[00:11:03] I don't know if you have anyone six months into it just yet.

[00:11:05] Almost there. Almost.

[00:11:08] Almost. But people you have four months into it, that system's running much more smoothly than the

[00:11:13] initial user. Yes, exactly.

[00:11:15] Because AI is learning along the way. Exactly. Over time, it's able to learn your style,

[00:11:19] learn your tone and it becomes perfect for you. Right? And what we're seeing is it's a

[00:11:24] pretty quick onboarding. It ends up being like you instantly get a note that's generated.

[00:11:28] That's decent, but it might not sound like you right away. And so a little bit of refinement,

[00:11:33] you can get it there within a week. It's like really fast learning where all of a sudden, yeah,

[00:11:37] I'll either click the button and it wrote the note better than I would have in my style,

[00:11:42] in my tone after a week of using it, which is that's super cool. We love that.

[00:11:46] That's impressive. That was the goal back in the day. And even it is now for most owners

[00:11:50] is if I can get my providers to walk out the door with their last patient of the day

[00:11:56] and have no notes to take home and they're able to free their mind that way,

[00:12:01] people would be avoiding burnout, I think significantly more if they just didn't have

[00:12:08] to do the typing, the writing, the ensuring that I wrote it correctly with all the

[00:12:13] goals and measures and all that kind of stuff. If I could have that kind of AI scribe,

[00:12:17] that would be huge. Right. And we see that as being a big thing in the industry as a whole,

[00:12:22] like burnout and churn within employees. And even just like over time providers not wanting

[00:12:28] to be a PT anymore, people leaving the industry, a lot of it is stemming from this documentation

[00:12:33] problem. Right. It ends up being insurance reimbursement and documentation. But if we

[00:12:37] can document better, we could potentially increase reimbursement or whatnot. So you

[00:12:40] don't have to play that game of insurance denials and whatnot. And then you get infinite

[00:12:44] hiring ability too. Imagine if you could hire and you could put on the application,

[00:12:48] no notes. Like you have an AI scribe doing your notes for you. Right?

[00:12:51] Oh yeah. Like if you're recruiting physical therapists, you say, hey, FII, we use AI.

[00:12:56] Hopefully you don't mind that. That's awesome. Yeah. We use it to do your notes.

[00:13:01] Yeah. You're not going to be taking notes home for hours on end every day. So we're seeing that

[00:13:05] as being a big thing for the clinic directors when we're signing them up.

[00:13:08] Yeah. I figure you've had to do a lot to ensure the safety of that because this is an

[00:13:13] AI situation, the potentials for hacks or whatnot are there. So you've had to put a

[00:13:18] lot of robust work into the HIPAA compliance aspect of it. Right?

[00:13:23] Yeah. So origin story of the product, it was like five years ago around Christmas dinner,

[00:13:27] my cousin Chris is doing notes while we're all eating and I'm like, hey, one day AI is

[00:13:31] going to help you with that. Fast forward a little bit. I had gone to school for

[00:13:35] AI basically, computer science, and I was working for a government contractor doing flight

[00:13:40] code for military planes and satellites like stick movement on the pilot turns to the plane

[00:13:44] actually moving and then satellites that are going to do some crazy stuff. Can't talk too

[00:13:48] deep on it, but cool stuff. But wasn't all that fulfilled. So I built my cousin Chris

[00:13:52] a perfect concept. He's like, dude, if you can make this happen, this would change the world.

[00:13:57] Okay. I had to put my head down for six months to make it HIPAA compliant. Right?

[00:14:00] Yes. It's a cool concept, but to actually get it to market and make it usable in industry,

[00:14:05] there's a huge headache to ensuring security, right? Everything's encrypted

[00:14:09] in rest encrypted in transit. We're using cloud hosting. That's ultra secure.

[00:14:14] There's also a lot of documentation on breach notifications and a lot of other like HIPAA stuff

[00:14:19] that needs to be in place before you can claim HIPAA security, which headache six months worth

[00:14:24] of effort to be secure. Maybe you've noticed some parallels in the growing pains of your

[00:14:30] business and maybe you've worked with enough owner PT owners to even though you are

[00:14:35] completely different industry, but working in PT, you're seeing some of the same growing

[00:14:40] pains that we are as physical therapy owners. Yeah, right. In the beginning, it's just you

[00:14:45] doing your thing, being a provider, doing your thing. And then as you try to scale and stuff,

[00:14:49] things get tricky, right? As you add people, you have inefficient systems, potentially you need

[00:14:54] to create systems to help manage the people and whatnot. And that's kind of what we were

[00:14:58] seeing. And then you hire people and it's like, okay, how do we make sure these people

[00:15:01] are producing? And how do I make sure that I'm setting them up to win, not setting them

[00:15:06] fail and whatnot. There's a lot of that going on. And I don't know, task management is a huge

[00:15:11] thing. I mean, as the like original person that founded the company and stuff, my time,

[00:15:17] I get stretched super thin. So it's how do you manage that? Right? Cause you're supposed to be

[00:15:21] a provider. So like in your end at PT's case, you're the one doing the care,

[00:15:25] but then also at the end of the day, you have to go home and do all the administrative

[00:15:28] stuff. And like, that's a headache in itself. And you're seeing the same thing, right?

[00:15:32] 100% same thing. Cause you're the CTO. I'm CTO, I'm CEO, I'm a sales guy, I'm a marketing guy,

[00:15:39] I'm still the coder guy. So there's a lot going on and we've grown to a point now where there's

[00:15:44] eight or so of us. So we have people that do all of that. And so it's cool to see

[00:15:50] things taken from my hand and like they're doing a better job than I was. And that's

[00:15:55] awesome. Right? And I'm able to like, I love seeing that. That's a cool place to be

[00:15:58] in where I hire people that are better than you and let them do their thing. I assume it's the

[00:16:03] same for you guys, right? But yeah, I end up doing administrative stuff for eight hours a day.

[00:16:07] And then at the end of my day, when there's nobody online, I don't have to apply to support

[00:16:10] calls or help people or kind of make sure everybody's going well. I can then go back.

[00:16:15] I can code some more. That's kind of the place that I'm in right now.

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[00:17:20] Yeah, very similar. And just because I've been able to witness how you've grown over the last

[00:17:24] five months. I think when I talked to you, I think it was just you or you had someone else

[00:17:29] maybe, but there was just you. There was a time when it was just me. And then I had,

[00:17:35] my cousin Chris was always around, but he was like user zero. He was the guy that was

[00:17:40] using a given feedback, using a given feedback. And then he was like the PT brain whenever I

[00:17:44] needed to pick like a PT's brain and needed help from the PT side. I could always go to

[00:17:49] him, but he was working full time and a job. And then I was picking his brain. Finally got

[00:17:54] him on board. And then we got Elaine on board. She's our COO. I had never done sales marketing

[00:17:59] or run a business. I just had a cool thing that I built that I got on the technical guy.

[00:18:04] And she was a huge help. She kind of took the second half of the business, running

[00:18:08] a business side. That was her unique value prop. That was her thing. And then I was a

[00:18:12] tech guy. I was attached and she taught me so much and I was able to help her. She helped

[00:18:16] me and we kind of fit together super well. So that core three, and then we brought on

[00:18:20] a coder from Silicon Valley and that's our PETA. She's amazing. She's a fantastic project

[00:18:25] manager, but also developer. And so she basically has taught me how to run a team

[00:18:30] and how do we get it? So everyone's efficient, not just a single person coding a project.

[00:18:36] Right. And so now we have four coders. And so that's a cool process in itself,

[00:18:40] but a huge thing to manage. And so she's helped run that type of thing. So there's

[00:18:44] so many different places, so many moving pieces going on. And I'm kind of like constantly

[00:18:49] switching throughout the day. And then at the end of the day, it's like, okay,

[00:18:52] where can I put eight hours of focused energy into something specific to be a computational

[00:18:57] unit, but also the overarching manager, which is probably the exact same thing for any clinic

[00:19:00] owner. Oh yeah, exactly. Well, the thing that's great about you that physical therapy

[00:19:05] owners can take away is that, and this is what I've witnessed from my perspective is

[00:19:11] you've always reached out to other people to get advice, to network, you name it. You reach out

[00:19:17] to me and honestly, some of our conversations are more business focused, right? And like,

[00:19:23] what do I need to do next? You're asking me these questions, right? And I love being a

[00:19:27] part of seeing your growth. And so the mantra that I always relate to the physical

[00:19:32] therapy owners is to reach out, step out and network. So got to pull your head out of

[00:19:37] treating patients 24 hours a day and network, right? And reach out to people to see like,

[00:19:44] what do I need? Where do I need to go next? And so whether that's a coach or consultant,

[00:19:49] a mentor, find something, someone, or get into a network to people who are experienced that can

[00:19:55] guide you a little bit. And I think that's where I've seen a lot of growth with you.

[00:20:00] We've gone over an organization board and what that looks like. And there's a lot more to it

[00:20:05] now than there was initially when I showed you what an org board was and how it should be set up.

[00:20:11] And kudos to you is that you have reached out and found those people and looking at next steps.

[00:20:15] And now you're looking at systems and how to onboard and train and that kind of stuff.

[00:20:20] And that's no different than the physical therapy world.

[00:20:22] Tanner Iskra Great, 100%. And somebody I met along the way, Scott Fritz, he says,

[00:20:26] your net worth is your network. It's either that or the other way around. And it's like-

[00:20:31] Scott Fritz I think it's flipped, but yeah.

[00:20:32] Tanner Iskra Yeah, your network is your network. I don't know. It's yes. And it's so true because

[00:20:37] I don't have enough experience and I don't know if any individual can have enough experience to

[00:20:43] really understand everything that's going on. And so the more people you can talk to about

[00:20:48] that have done something similar, done something like this before, you're going to get snippets

[00:20:53] of gold and everything like that they're saying. And it's like, okay, if I had to go make all

[00:20:57] the same mistakes that you made in the past that you learned from and you implemented,

[00:21:00] and you're no longer making it. If I had to go make all those same mistakes,

[00:21:03] I'm probably going to fail. And so how many people can I talk to that will give me snippets

[00:21:09] of gold as often as possible to help me grow? And it's all about the unknown unknowns, right?

[00:21:15] That's what you want to uncover in those conversations. What are the things

[00:21:19] that I don't know that can hurt me? And it's like an org board. Yeah, I've heard of it,

[00:21:25] but I didn't realize the importance on and like how it affects growth until I kind of sat with you.

[00:21:31] And then I went through the exercise of making one. I'm like, oh yeah, I actually need this.

[00:21:35] Otherwise things are going to fall apart as soon as we start to scale. And we were geared up

[00:21:40] to scale pretty early on because we had that conversation early on when we built that early

[00:21:44] on. And so when there were just three or four of us, we were ready to onboard five, six,

[00:21:49] seven more people. And we're still in that growth stage where that original org chart,

[00:21:52] yeah, it's changed. It's changed a lot, but that's kind of the point, right? You figure out,

[00:21:57] okay, who is the next hire? Where do we need the most attention? And if you're just hiring

[00:22:02] great people to great work, that's awesome. But you kind of need to be more strategic about

[00:22:06] it. Right. You don't want to just hire them to do anything you asked them to do. You want

[00:22:10] to hire them to do a specific thing and take that off of your plate. Yes. Do the thing that

[00:22:15] I'm doing poorly exactly. 100%. Yeah. It's awesome to see your growth. And it isn't all

[00:22:21] that much different than the physical therapy owner who is looking to scale as well. Right.

[00:22:26] Yeah. It's figure out where do we need more units, essentially computational units, right? Do you

[00:22:31] need more providers to be giving care? Do you need somebody at the front desk? Do you need

[00:22:36] somebody to be doing marketing? Right. There are so many parallels where the unique value

[00:22:40] prop, the core value proposition for what you guys do is help people get better. What I do is

[00:22:45] help people, help people get better. I'm just software. You're just physical therapy. Those

[00:22:49] are the computational units. The rest surrounding business is very much the same.

[00:22:53] Yep, definitely. Now that you've been in the physical therapy space, you've seen some of

[00:22:57] the other players in the physical therapy space. Like I've interviewed Pedro to share of

[00:23:02] prediction health. Yeah. I know you've talked to him as well. Where do you see AI affecting

[00:23:07] physical therapy in the future? Where do you see this going? Yeah. So I'm definitely

[00:23:12] partial in that. I think documentation is the biggest burden. And so I think AI will help us

[00:23:17] be more efficient with documentation, make it so we don't have to. Unfortunately,

[00:23:21] insurance is using it to audit your notes. And so now we can kind of give you a tool to fight

[00:23:26] back against insurance. And there will always be some amount of ebb and flow between providers

[00:23:30] and insurance. And I just think that right now it is heavily favoring insurance and there needs

[00:23:36] to be a shift back towards equilibrium where providers now have a tool that helps them be

[00:23:41] more efficient, that helps them write better notes, they get better reimbursement rates and

[00:23:45] whatnot and do less documentation. And so I'm partial. I say documentation is like the holy

[00:23:50] grail of AI in physical therapy, but eventually there will be clinical decision-making support.

[00:23:57] If you're able to see here's the top three things that it could be given the patient's

[00:24:00] history, given what we know about them today, just make sure you check these things. Make

[00:24:04] sure that yeah, you might not be thinking of frozen shoulder, but maybe it is. Like did you

[00:24:08] rule these things out? And it'll just kind of be something to bounce ideas off of. Right

[00:24:12] now AI isn't able to think creatively like a human would. It's more of an aid to help you

[00:24:19] bounce ideas off of. And I use it every day for that. Hey, I'm thinking about this. What

[00:24:24] are your thoughts? And I asked the AI that and it spits back here's four things. And sometimes

[00:24:29] it's useful, sometimes it's not, but every once in a while two of those things are like,

[00:24:32] oh, interesting. Double down on that. Tell me more. What do you mean by that?

[00:24:36] And then it like spurs something in my own mind where it's like, oh yeah, let me go do that.

[00:24:41] And that's kind of a cool place to be in. And how do we leverage that to help a PT be more

[00:24:44] efficient? So clinical in their care, right? How do we make it so we can get better outcomes?

[00:24:50] Like that's the altruistic goal. Right now it's okay. How do we make your time more

[00:24:55] efficient? How do we make you do more of what you love? That's our goal. Whereas eventually

[00:24:59] it'll be okay. How can we use AI to have better outcomes? How can we leverage AI so that

[00:25:05] people get better faster? Like that sounds super cool to me. How can we make it so their care

[00:25:09] is better? And we're helping with care being better in that you don't have to be on a computer

[00:25:14] or writing stuff down as you talk. Instead, you can give your full attention to your therapist.

[00:25:17] But eventually you'll see it being more for better outcomes and with enough data about,

[00:25:23] okay, these are the best activities to do given this data or given this subset of what

[00:25:29] we know about the patient, we're able to say with a 94% confidence, it's going to be this.

[00:25:34] And then the other 6% is this. That's like an eventual. That's the holy grail of all medical

[00:25:39] as well. But today we have documentation with AI. I don't think the way things are going,

[00:25:45] we're probably not that far off. Do you think maybe in a few years?

[00:25:49] The rate that AI is going is far faster than anyone ever thought. And it's a little

[00:25:55] backwards of what people thought. People originally thought it was going to take like more

[00:25:58] blue collar automation, more of the mundane work that's repetitive and automate that.

[00:26:04] And what we're seeing is the exact opposite. It went right for creative stuff. It went for

[00:26:07] image generation. It went for coding. Content creation. Yeah, content creation. It went for

[00:26:12] a lot of like more white collar weird jobs like that rather than bottom up. And so

[00:26:18] it's hard to say with confidence where AI will go. But I think it is going after

[00:26:24] high value, high ticket items like clinical decision making and whatnot as an aid to a doctor,

[00:26:30] as an aid to a physical therapist, as an aid to that kind of thing. So how far? I can't say

[00:26:36] with confidence what's going to happen within the next three years, but I will say that

[00:26:40] today I could build you something that's pretty clever that is actually going to

[00:26:44] potentially help you be more productive, help you be more creative, help you have better

[00:26:48] outcomes. It's just the ball is completely in your court as far as like how utilized it gets.

[00:26:53] And then the accuracy is still something that needs to be studied over time. And so it's not

[00:26:57] an instant, yeah, we built a tool here to go. There's so much that needs to go into vetting

[00:27:01] the tool, making sure it's not leading you astray, making sure it doesn't make you

[00:27:05] dependent on it, rather just it's a lever that helps you be more efficient.

[00:27:09] I think Pedro said the same thing. And so I think that's kind of cool that you both

[00:27:13] recognize that, and that is how AI will help us take all the knowledge that's out there,

[00:27:19] all the studies. Right? And like you said, based on the patient's history, their mode of injury,

[00:27:25] their past medical history, then they can look at those things, compare it against all the

[00:27:30] studies that are out there in the world and the history of the world and say, well,

[00:27:34] more than likely it is this diagnosis and these are the best three treatments for it.

[00:27:39] Right. Yeah, these will have the best outcomes. Yeah.

[00:27:42] Right. I think a lot of people might get a little bit hesitant because the human's not involved in

[00:27:48] that. But like you said, I think if people looked at it as an opportunity for feedback,

[00:27:56] for recommendations and like, oh, I don't have to read all the articles all the time to stay

[00:28:02] on top of the most efficient things that I should provide for this particular case.

[00:28:07] But AI can do that for me based on my skill set and what I know. I can take what that provides

[00:28:14] me and implement it in my care and to get the most efficient outcomes. I think that'd be huge.

[00:28:19] That's awesome. I totally agree. I think that's the holy grail of AI in medicine, AI in like

[00:28:25] the whole medical sector. It's the clinical decision-making support. I don't think it's

[00:28:29] taking the human out of loop, especially in physical therapy. People are always going to want

[00:28:33] human interaction. They're never going to want a robot to manipulate their arm.

[00:28:37] I don't think I would ever feel confident, maybe eventually in like 100 years we'll get there.

[00:28:41] But at least for now it's like this machine could twist me in the wrong way and

[00:28:45] like break my arm off. I don't really trust that.

[00:28:48] And never stop.

[00:28:49] Yeah, exactly. Right? Whereas used as a support for a human to make a human more

[00:28:55] efficient, to make a human do more of what they love. That seems more in line with

[00:29:00] what it should be.

[00:29:01] Yeah, I got you. Cool. So where do you see Comprehend PT being in the next year?

[00:29:07] Tell the audience a little bit. You're integrated with a couple EMRs at this point.

[00:29:11] And where do you see this going over the course of 2024 and then going forward?

[00:29:16] Yeah. Our main objectives for 2024 are to have more customers, obviously, but to be

[00:29:21] integrated with more EMRs and to have official partnerships with more EMRs. Right now we have

[00:29:25] official partnerships with Empower EMR. Used to be on the therapy industry. He's a great guy.

[00:29:29] Love the team and whatnot. They're awesome. And we are happy that they're our first

[00:29:34] official partnership. We integrate with Prompt and WebPT and PT Everywhere and Jane,

[00:29:39] and we're working through an official partnership with Jane. But we want to get more of those

[00:29:43] official partnerships and more supporting EMRs. We have some meetings set up like a Hello Note

[00:29:48] and a few other EMRs in order to get integrated. And we're excited about those

[00:29:53] opportunities. And we're excited about like the official partnerships. We want to be

[00:29:57] compatible with all EMRs. We want to get to a point where you can use Comprehend and it's

[00:30:00] the same interface no matter what EMR using. So say you're a traveling PT, you don't have to

[00:30:04] learn the documentation system. You just have to know, oh, comprehend. It's common amongst

[00:30:08] all EMRs. I just record and I hit comprehend. And all of a sudden my documentation is done.

[00:30:13] I read it over. I didn't have to figure out, oh yeah, their charting system,

[00:30:16] I have to do this. And this is kind of how they like it arranged. Instead,

[00:30:20] a clinic owner shared their comprehend template with the traveling PT and their note now sounds

[00:30:27] the clinic. They have a clinic level. This is what notes generally look like.

[00:30:30] Trey Lockerbie That's beautiful.

[00:30:31] Jason Kroon Yeah. So we think that's the trajectory of growth, integrating with all EMRs,

[00:30:36] having official partnerships with the EMRs and yeah, just getting it into the hands of more

[00:30:40] users. We want to see this widely applicable. We want to see this used everywhere. 100%

[00:30:44] market adoption. And that's the goal. We'll see how close we can get.

[00:30:48] Trey Lockerbie That's awesome. That's super exciting.

[00:30:50] Well, if people want to learn a little bit more about Comprehend PT, where do they go?

[00:30:53] Jason Kroon Yes, they're going to go to www.comprehendpt.ai.

[00:30:58] They can Google Comprehend PT as well and it'll show up as a first result. So super proud. Yeah,

[00:31:03] there's a lot of good information out there on AI and stuff. And we kind of aggregate and kind

[00:31:08] of show you how to use it and whatnot in a pretty concise manner there.

[00:31:11] Trey Lockerbie That's cool. And if we're silly physical therapists that go to

[00:31:14] comprehendpt.com, is it going to redirect us to comprehendpt.ai?

[00:31:18] Jason Kroon Yes, it will. You don't have to worry about it.

[00:31:21] Yes, we funnel all the domains. We got everything that was even close. Like comprehendai scribe,

[00:31:25] comprehendhealth, comprehendpt.ai, comprehendpt.com. And we got a lot of different domains

[00:31:31] that all funnel to the main one. Trey Lockerbie

[00:31:32] Well, hey, awesome. That's great. Thanks for joining me today. If people want

[00:31:36] to reach out to you directly, are you on the socials?

[00:31:38] Jason Kroon Yeah. So we got at comprehend health is our Insta.

[00:31:42] If you Google Comprehend PT, there's a lot of pages that will correlate to us.

[00:31:46] There's a phone number at the bottom if you want to talk to us. You can get my

[00:31:49] personal cell phone if you want to talk and shoot me a text, whatever you want.

[00:31:52] Our emails at the bottom of our site as well. So we're pretty responsive. We're

[00:31:55] very responsive. We're still in a phase where we list our customers. We love the feedback.

[00:31:58] Trey Lockerbie That's great. Well, thanks for the time

[00:32:00] today. I appreciate it, Jake. Jason Kroon

[00:32:02] For sure. Appreciate it. Thanks, Nathan.

[00:32:07] Thanks for joining us today in the Physical Therapy Owners Club,

[00:32:10] the resource for stability and freedom in your PT practice. Reach out and join the

[00:32:14] network today. Subscribe to our podcast, get links to social media and access all

[00:32:19] of our episodes with show notes at ptoclub.com.