• Aged care physiotherapy across Brighton

Aged care physiotherapy and OT at home in Brighton

Your father went into the hospital walking. He is coming home not walking, and nobody at the hospital said that out loud.

Ten days in bed does that. An older adult can lose a noticeable amount of leg strength in a week lying down, and the discharge letter almost never mentions it. What the family notices is that he can’t get out of his own armchair any more, and that he has started sleeping in it instead of going upstairs.

That is the week we get most of our Brighton calls.

  • Physiotherapy
  • Occupational Therapy
  • Home Assessments
  • Assistive Equipment

What we do and where

Total Health Choice provides physiotherapy, occupational therapy, exercise physiology and speech pathology in people’s own homes in Brighton 3186 and Brighton East 3187. Podiatry and massage therapy are both coming. We also visit Elsternwick 3185, Gardenvale 3185, Hampton 3188, Elwood 3184 and Caulfield South 3162, We also go past these suburbs, usually another ten kilometres or so. If yours is not on the list, ring and ask.

We come to the house. There is no clinic to get to, no car park, no waiting room, and no reason for anyone to be shuffling down Church Street on a walking frame to get to an appointment.

We visit private homes, retirement villages, independent living units and residential aged care homes across Brighton.

The first visit, after hospital

Our admin team books the visit and takes the details then, including anything the therapist needs to know about getting in. You get a text confirming the date and time.

The physiotherapist, or the exercise physiologist.

The visit runs about an hour, and if there is a discharge summary we review it, including the medication changes, because a new blood pressure tablet started in hospital is one of the most common reasons someone starts falling in the fortnight after they come home.

Then we find out what he actually can’t do now. Not the diagnosis. The specific things. Getting off the toilet. Getting out of the car. Getting up from the low sofa in the front room. Managing the step down into the garden. Standing long enough to make a cup of tea.

We measure the baseline, because “he’s a bit weaker” is not something you can track. Timed Up and Go. Thirty second sit to stand. Four stage balance test. Walking speed over four metres. We write the numbers down on day one so that in four weeks we can tell you whether this is working or not.

And we look at what he is doing all day. Someone who has been in hospital for ten days and now sits down for fourteen hours a day does not get stronger, no matter what exercises we leave.

The occupational therapist.

The OT walks through the house with him. The front steps and the path from the street. Whether the bathroom has a rail and which side of the shower he leans on. The height of the bed and the height of the toilet. The stairs, if there are stairs, and whether it is time to move a bed downstairs for a few weeks. The path from bed to toilet at two in the morning, in the dark, which is where most falls in this house will happen if any of them do.

What we do about it

A home exercise program built around what the client can tolerate. Seated or standing exercises, near a benchtop or a chair for support, ideally five to ten minutes a few times a week, printed with photographs.

An occupational therapy visit if the bathroom needs a rail, the bed needs raising, or the shower needs a stool. The OT measures, writes the recommendation, and tells you the cost before anything is ordered.

An exercise physiologist whenever the goal moves past safety and into getting properly fit again. They can come on board at any time, and that is the point at which most providers stop.

The same therapist each visit. Not a new face every fortnight.

And a monthly progress report to the family with the outcome measures in it, so you can see whether the sit to stand went from six to eleven or whether it did not move. That report goes out to the care team involved.

Explore Physiotherapy

How this gets paid for in Brighton

Support at Home.

The government program that replaced Home Care Packages. Allied health sits inside it, and we work with the providers who manage the package. Ask his provider to call us, or we can contact them directly.

Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP).

For smaller amounts of help before a full package.

Private.

No referral, no assessment queue, we can start this week.

TAC.

if a car accident caused it.

If you have no idea which of those applies, ring us and say that. It is the most common call we take.

Why Brighton families call us

We ring back within thirty minutes on business days.

We have been mobile since 2011 and there are fifty of us, which means when your father’s physiotherapist gets sick, someone else can come, or we reschedule for later in the week.

Our Google rating is 4.9 from over 200 reviews.

And we run Function First, our own clinical program inside residential aged care facilities, so if your father eventually moves into care we often already work in the building.

Most first visits happen within five business days. We will give you a real date on the phone rather than “we’ll be in touch”.

Every therapist who comes to the house holds a current police check and NDIS worker screening clearance. And you get the same therapist each visit, so it is not a different stranger at the door every fortnight.

Explore Occupational Therapy
  • Helpful information

Questions Brighton families ask

No, and the first six weeks are the ones that matter most. Strength lost in a hospital bed comes back with the right loading, but it does not come back on its own from sitting in a chair. Start now rather than waiting to see if he picks up.

Not necessarily, and not yet. The usual first step is a temporary set up downstairs while we work on the stairs, plus an OT assessment of the stair rail. Plenty of people get back upstairs. Some do not, and then it is a considered decision rather than a panic in the middle of a bad week.

Both. Brighton 3186 and Brighton East 3187, and Elsternwick, Gardenvale, Hampton and Elwood as well.

Not to see us privately. You can start this week and sort the funding out afterwards, and plenty of Brighton families do exactly that because the assessment queue is not fast.

Ring us and we will tell you the figure on the phone before you book anything. We have a variety of service options.

Yes. Retirement villages, independent living units and residential aged care homes.

We do. The GP gets the same monthly report you get, with the same numbers in it.

You will see it in the numbers. If the sit to stand and the walking speed are not moving, he is not doing them, and we will tell you that rather than sending a nice report that says everything is going well.


  • Talk to our team

Talk to us about Brighton

Call 1800 847 847, or submit an enquiry and we will call back within thirty minutes on a business day.

Tell us what happened and we will tell you what we would do first.

On an NDIS plan instead? Our Brighton NDIS physiotherapy and occupational therapy page is the one you want.

Contact Us Make a Referral