• Aged care physio across Parkdale

Aged care physiotherapy and OT at home in Parkdale

The rehab was going well right up until the day it stopped.

Six weeks at Caulfield or Cheltenham, daily therapy, real progress, and then a discharge date, a home program on two sheets of paper, and a review in three months. Your mother comes home to Parkdale, does the sheets for about nine days, and then stops, because doing rehab on your own in your own lounge room is nearly impossible and nobody has ever managed it.

Recovery after a stroke does not stop at discharge. The therapy usually does.

  • 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 Parkdale 3195. Podiatry and massage therapy are both coming. We also visit Mordialloc 3195, Aspendale 3195, Braeside 3195, Mentone 3194, Cheltenham 3192, Highett 3190 and Chelsea 3196, 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

Picking up where the hospital stopped

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 and a hospital home program we review them, and then largely rewrite the program, because a program written for a rehab gym does not work in a house in Parkdale.

Then we find out where things actually are now. What the arm is doing. What the leg is doing. Whether she is walking with the stick she was given or leaning on the furniture instead, which is what most people do. Whether the shoulder on the affected side is starting to hurt, which is common, preventable and often missed. Whether the speech and the language have changed since discharge, in either direction.

Then we measure, and we keep measuring the same things. Timed Up and Go. Thirty second sit to stand. Four stage balance test. Walking speed over four metres. Grip strength on both sides.

The occupational therapist.

The OT walks through the house with her, on the affected side. Which way she turns in the hallway. Which side the bathroom rail is on, and whether it is on the useful side. The step into the garden. Bed height and which side she gets out of. The kitchen and what she can do one handed. The path from bed to toilet at night.

What the program looks like

Task specific practice, done in the room where the task happens. Standing up from her own chair. Turning in her own hallway. Getting a cup out of her own cupboard.

Enough repetitions to matter. The single biggest difference between hospital rehab and home rehab is volume, and volume is what falls off the moment nobody is there. We build the program so the repetitions happen without a therapist standing there, and we check whether they did.

Upper limb work, because the arm gets less attention than the leg almost everywhere and it is the thing that ends up mattering most for dressing, eating and washing.

An occupational therapist for the house, the equipment, and getting back to doing things one handed while the other side improves.

An exercise physiologist for conditioning, which after a stroke is also secondary prevention, and this is the piece almost nobody gets.

A speech pathologist if speech or language were affected. Language recovery keeps going well past the point where most people stop being offered therapy for it.

The same therapists each visit, and they talk to each other.

And a monthly progress report to the family with the outcome measures in it, sent out to the care team involved. Walking into a three month review with three months of repeated measurements changes that appointment completely.

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.

Why Parkdale 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 after a stroke is the difference between a rehab program and four disconnected appointments.

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 Parkdale families ask

It does not have to be. Recovery keeps going for a long time after discharge, but only if the practice keeps going, and almost nobody keeps it going alone. That is the specific gap this fills.

Longer than most people are told. The fastest gains are early, but function keeps improving with practice well beyond the first few months, particularly for the arm and for language. Being told the window has closed is usually about service availability, not about her.

There is usually something worth doing, even when full recovery is not on the table. It may be preventing the shoulder pain and the stiffness that come with a non functioning arm, which are miserable and avoidable. We will tell you honestly what is realistic.

Yes. Parkdale 3195, Mordialloc 3195, Aspendale 3195, Braeside 3195, Mentone 3194, Cheltenham 3192, Highett 3190 and Chelsea 3196.

Yes. Speech pathology in the home, for speech and language. It is part of the same team, so the speech pathologist and the physiotherapist are talking about the same person.

Yes, and it is worth starting inside the transition care period rather than waiting for it to end, because it runs out.

Conditioning work after a stroke is also secondary prevention, and it is the piece most people are never offered. It is one of the reasons we push the exercise physiology.

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


  • Talk to our team

Talk to us about Parkdale

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

Have the discharge summary handy if you can. It makes the first conversation much faster.

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

Contact Us Make a Referral