• Aged care physiotherapy across Chadstone

Aged care physiotherapy and OT at home in Chadstone

The neurologist appointment is in five months.

In the meantime your father has been told he has Parkinson’s, handed a pamphlet, and sent home to Chadstone to get on with it. He has started shuffling. He has stopped swinging his right arm. He has had two near misses turning around in the kitchen, and the specialist’s letter mentioned none of that because the specialist saw him sitting down in a chair for fifteen minutes.

Progressive conditions are not a waiting game. What happens in the months between the diagnosis and the next appointment decides a lot.

  • 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 Chadstone 3148. Podiatry and massage therapy are both coming. We also visit Malvern East 3145, Oakleigh 3166, Hughesdale 3166, Ashwood 3147, Chadstone’s surrounding streets off Warrigal Road, Mount Waverley 3149 and Murrumbeena 3163, 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. Private homes, retirement villages, independent living units and residential aged care homes.

Make a Referral

Conditions we work with at home

Parkinson’s disease. Stroke. Dementia. Multiple sclerosis. Motor neurone disease. Arthritis. Chronic pain. Acquired brain injury. Deconditioning after a hospital stay.

We do not treat the diagnosis. We treat what the diagnosis is doing to the person’s day, which is a different job and it has to be done in their actual house.

What the first visit looks like with a progressive condition

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.

We ask what has changed in the last three months, because with a progressive condition the direction matters more than the snapshot. Then we ask about the specific things. Turning around in the kitchen. Getting out of the armchair. Rolling over in bed, which almost nobody mentions and which is one of the first things to go with Parkinson’s. Freezing in doorways. Doing up buttons. Whether his voice has got quieter, which is a speech pathology problem with a real answer and is very often ignored for years.

Then we measure. Timed Up and Go. Thirty second sit to stand. Four stage balance test. Walking speed over four metres. Step length and whether the arms are swinging. We write it down so that in three months we can say what has changed and by how much.

The occupational therapist.

The OT walks through the house with him. Doorways and thresholds, which are where freezing happens. Turning space in the bathroom and the kitchen. Bed height, and whether the sheets are the slippery kind that make rolling easier. Rugs, cords, lighting. The path from bed to toilet at two in the morning.

What we do about it

For Parkinson’s specifically, the evidence is for big, loud and hard. Large amplitude movement. Cueing strategies, which is the trick of using a beat or a line on the floor to get through a doorway. Strength work that is heavy enough to matter. Not gentle stretching, which is what most people get offered.

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 exercise physiologist for the harder conditioning work, which is where the strongest evidence sits for slowing functional decline.

A speech pathologist if the voice has gone quiet or the words are getting harder to find. Both are common in Parkinson’s, both are treatable, and both are routinely left until they are much harder to shift.

An occupational therapist for the house, the equipment, and the things that have quietly stopped, like getting dressed without help.

The same therapists each visit, and they talk to each other, because a person with Parkinson’s being seen by four separate businesses is how things get missed.

And a monthly progress report to the family with the outcome measures in it, sent out to the care team involved. With a progressive condition that report is the single most useful thing you can walk into a specialist appointment holding.

Explore Physiotherapy

How it gets paid for

Support at Home.

Which replaced Home Care Packages.

Commonwealth Home Support Programme.

For smaller amounts before a full package.

Private.

No referral, start this week.

NDIS.

If he was diagnosed before turning sixty five and is already a participant.

Why Chadstone families call us

We ring back within thirty minutes on business days.

Physio, OT, exercise physiology and speech pathology from one team with one phone number, which for a progressive condition is the difference between coordinated care and four sets of appointments nobody is joining up.

Fifty of us, mobile since 2011. 4.9 from over 200 Google reviews.

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 Chadstone families ask

No. The months after a diagnosis are the ones with the most to gain, because he is still able to do the work that keeps him able. Waiting five months is five months of decline you do not need to have.

Both, and they do different jobs. Medication manages the symptoms. Exercise is the only thing with real evidence behind it for keeping function and slowing decline, and it has to be big enough and hard enough to count. Gentle stretching will not do it.

Very likely, and it is treatable. Speech pathology has specific programs for exactly this and they work best started early. Ask us about it, because it is the thing families most often do not know is available.

Yes. Chadstone 3148, Malvern East 3145, Oakleigh 3166, Hughesdale 3166, Ashwood 3147, Mount Waverley 3149 and Murrumbeena 3163.

The program gets built for what she can follow, which usually means fewer exercises, done at the same time every day, with the person who is there anyway. We teach it to you or to her carer as much as to her.

Yes. Cueing strategies, and they can be taught. A line on the floor, a counted rhythm, a specific way of shifting weight. It is one of the most satisfying things to fix because it works quickly.

If his GP writes one, it covers five allied health visits a year. It is worth having and it is not enough on its own. Most families use it alongside private.

Yes. We run Function First, our own program inside residential aged care homes, so we are often already working in the building.


  • Talk to our team

Talk to us about Chadstone

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

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

Contact Us Make a Referral