Quick start

warning

RehabAlpha is still under active development. It is not yet HIPAA compliant and should only be used with dummy data.

New to the platform? This quick tutorial covers the essentials and helps you get familiar with RehabAlpha in just a few minutes. 😊

Go to rehabalpha.com/signup and click Sign Up to create a free account.

Fill out the form, then check your inbox for a verification email from support@rehabalpha.com. Click Verify your email in the email body.

After you verify your email, you'll be prompted to set up two-factor authentication. Enter your cell phone number, then click Send Code. Within a few seconds, you'll receive a text message with a 6-digit verification code. Enter the verification code, then click Complete Sign Up.

Wait a few seconds while RehabAlpha provisions your account... and boom, you're in! Welcome to the future of therapy management 🎉

Didn't receive the verification email?

Check your spam folder 👀

2. Create an organization

After signing up, you'll be redirected to your account page. Here, you'll see two options:

Create an organization - creates a "blank slate" therapy company with zero therapists, facilities, and patients.
Create a test organization - creates a therapy company pre-populated with fake therapists, facilities, and patients.

Let's start with some dummy data. Click Create a test organization. After a few seconds, you'll be redirected to your new organization's dashboard.

important

Your RehabAlpha account can be associated with multiple organizations. You can switch between them using the dropdown at the top left.

The dashboard

The dashboard is your command center. It might be empty now, but as you work, it'll populate with important info and alerts. In particular, your dashboard displays three main sections.

Notices - stuff that needs your attention (expiring licenses, missing info, etc.)
Upcoming - treatments and appointments
Labor log - your hours, PTO, etc.

The sidebar has two sections: Your and Organization.

Your = pages just for you
Organization = pages for everyone

For example, links to your profile and your dashboard appear under Your. Links to the organization's directory of patients and facilities appear under Organization.

3. Add a facility

Click Facilities in the sidebar. Then click New facility.

Fill out:

Name: Rosewood Nursing
State: Louisiana

Then click Save to create the facility. You'll be redirected to the Rosewood Nursing facility page where you can manage the facility's patients, schedule, settings, and more.

4. Add a payor

From the sidebar, click Payors → New payor.

Fill out:

Name: Aetna Rehab
Type: Commercial insurance

Then click Save to create the payor.

5. Add a physician

From the sidebar, click People → Physicians → New physician.

Fill out:

First name: John
Last name: Zoidberg
Email: jzoidberg@gmail.com

Then click Save to create the physician.

6. Add a therapist

From the sidebar, click People → Therapists → New therapist.

Fill out:

First name: Renee
Last name: Hart
Email: renee@gmail.com

Check the Invite user box. Then scroll down and click Save to create the therapist.

Now, two things happen:

Renee is added as a therapist to your database of therapists. You can find her on the Therapists page and manage her details, schedule, and settings.
RehabAlpha will email Renee an invitation to join your therapy company. She can click the link in the email to create her own account and access your organization's RehabAlpha workspace.

Add a license

Oops, we forgot to add Renee's license!

From the sidebar, click People → Therapists. Find and click Renee in the list of therapists. Click Edit → scroll to Licenses → Add license.

Fill out:

State: Louisiana
Licensure: Physical therapist
License #: 123
Expiration: <pick tomorrow's date>

Then click Save.

Why set Expiration as tomorrow's date?

This gives us a chance to show off RehabAlpha's compliance review. Throughout the app, RehabAlpha will warn you that Renee's license expires soon. For example, you'll eventually get a notice about it in your dashboard. (RehabAlpha reviews your data once per hour and updates your dashboard notices accordingly.)

7. Add a patient

From the sidebar, click People → Patients → New patient.

Fill out:

First name: Curly
Last name: Howard
Birthdate: 10/22/1953
Gender: male

Then click Save to create the patient.

Add a coverage

Coverages are like policy periods -> they inform RehabAlpha:

which payor(s) can pay for a patient's therapy,
during which time frame, and
the associated financial obligations (deductible, copay, etc.).

From the sidebar, click People → Patients. By default, this table shows active patients (i.e. patients with an active admission). Since Curly doesn't have an admission yet, he doesn't show up in the list. Untoggle the "Active patients" filter at the top right of the table to show all patients. Then find and click Curly in the list of patients. Click Coverages → New coverage.

Fill out:

Payor: Aetna Rehab
Start date: 1/1/2025
End date: 1/1/2026

Then click Save to create the coverage.

Add an admission

From the sidebar, click People → Patients. Find and click Curly in the list of patients. Click Admissions → New admission.

Fill out:

Facility: Rosewood Nursing
Place of Service: 31 - Skilled Nursing Facility
Admit date: 01/01/2025

In the Physician section, click Add physician → select Dr. John Zoidberg from the dropdown.

Scroll down to Billing periods → Add billing period.

Fill out:

Disciplines: PT, OT, & SLP
Start of period: Admit date
Payors (coverages): Select Aetna Rehab (100%)

A billing period specifies which of Curly's coverages should be billed, for how much, and in what order. In this case, Curly has one coverage with Aetna Rehab that covers 100% of his therapy costs.

Then click Save to create the admission.

8. Add a therapy case

A therapy case is like a discipline-specific therapy "episode" or "track". It serves as a parent folder for related clinical documents, including:

evaluation
treatments
progress reports
recertifications
discharge

From the sidebar, click People → Patients. Find Curly in the list of patients. Then click the green admission badge labeled something like "Rosewood Nursing (POS 31 - Skilled Nursing Facility) · <admit date> - ongoing".

Scroll down to Therapy cases and click New case.

Fill out:

Discipline: Physical Therapy

Click Save to create the case.

9. Add an evaluation

From the sidebar, click People → Patients. Find Curly in the list of patients. Then click the green case badge labeled "PT".

Then click Evaluation to start a physical therapy evaluation.

Overview

The evaluation form is a complex beast. Before we start filling it out, let's discuss a few things..

The evaluation is one of five different types of clinical documents.
1. evaluation
2. treatment
3. progress report
4. recertification
5. discharge
Every clinical document begins with an "AI context" box that you can use to get AI suggestions for the document's content.
Clinical documents are customizable. If you don't like the way our default evaluation form looks, you can change it!

Select a therapist

In the Basic details section of the evaluation form, click the dropdown for the Therapist field and select Renee Hart.

Shouldn't a therapist do the evaluation?

This is where the quick start guide gets a little weird...

The first thing to understand is that you are a Staff member, not a Therapist. (You can check this by going to your profile and looking at your role.)

If you were a therapist with the proper license, RehabAlpha would auto-select you in the Therapist field when setting up the evaluation. But since you're not, you have to select a therapist manually.

If you want, you can navigate to your profile, change your role to Therapist, give yourself the proper license and carry on with this eval. But for the sake of keeping this quick start guide quick, just select Renee as the therapist.

Add a medical diagnosis

Scroll down to the Medical diagnoses section.

Click Add diagnosis. Type “right knee” → select M17.11.

Notes:

You can add as many medical diagnoses as you want. The first one be the primary diagnosis, and the rest will be secondary diagnoses. (You can drag them around to change the order.)
ICD-10 codes are searchable by code or by description. So you can type "M17.11" or "right knee" to find the same code. Just make sure you spell correctly 😉

Implement a custom evaluation template

In the Basic Details section of the evaluation, you'll notice a field labeled Custom data template. By default, it's set to "Default evaluation template". Deselect it by clicking on the dropdown and choosing "Default evaluation template".

When you deselect the default template, you'll notice a big chunk of the evaluation form disappears. That chunk of of the form is completely customizable by your therapy organization. RehabAlpha gives every organization a default template, but you can change it or add your own templates to collect exactly the data you want. Let's do that.

First, scroll to the bottom of the evaluation form and click Save. Then, from the sidebar, click Schema. This opens the Schema Editor, which is where you can customize your clinical document templates. This may look scary, but don't worry - you don't need to understand the technical details.. The goal here is just to understand what's possible.

Click inside the editor and delete all the text. (After you click in the editor, you can use Ctrl+A (or Cmd+A on Mac) to select all the text and then delete it.). Then copy and paste the following JSON schema into the editor:

[
  {
    id: 'pt_snf_evaluation_template',
    type: 'template',
    label: 'PT SNF Evaluation',
    appliesTo: 'evaluation',
    priority: 1,
    children: ['pt_snf_evaluation_group'],
  },

  {
    id: 'yes_no_options',
    type: 'options',
    items: [
      { label: 'Yes', value: 'yes' },
      { label: 'No', value: 'no' },
    ],
  },

  {
    id: 'pt_snf_evaluation_group',
    type: 'group',
    label: 'Physical Therapy Evaluation',
    description: 'Focused evaluation for physical therapy in a skilled nursing facility.',
    showIf: {
      all: [
        { field: '*disciplineId', equals: 'PT' },
        { field: '*placeOfServiceId', equals: '31' },
      ],
    },
    children: ['subjective_group', 'pain_group', 'knee_rom_group'],
  },

  {
    id: 'subjective_group',
    type: 'group',
    label: 'Subjective',
    description: 'Information reported by the patient, caregiver, or chart review.',
    children: ['chief_complaint', 'history'],
  },

  {
    id: 'pain_group',
    type: 'group',
    label: 'Pain',
    children: ['has_pain', 'pain_location', 'pain_level'],
  },

  {
    id: 'knee_rom_group',
    type: 'group',
    label: 'Knee Range of Motion',
    description: 'Enter knee range of motion in degrees.',
    children: [
      'right_knee_flexion',
      'right_knee_extension',
      'left_knee_flexion',
      'left_knee_extension',
    ],
  },

  {
    id: 'chief_complaint',
    type: 'textInput',
    label: 'Chief Complaint',
    placeholder: 'e.g. Difficulty walking after right knee replacement',
    isRequiredToSave: true,
  },

  {
    id: 'history',
    type: 'textAreaInput',
    label: 'History',
    placeholder: 'Document relevant history, prior level of function, recent hospital course, and current concerns.',
  },

  {
    id: 'has_pain',
    type: 'selectInput',
    label: 'Is pain present?',
    options: 'yes_no_options',
    isRequiredToSave: true,
  },

  {
    id: 'pain_location',
    type: 'textInput',
    label: 'Pain Location',
    placeholder: 'e.g. Right anterior knee',
    showIf: { field: 'has_pain', equals: 'yes' },
  },

  {
    id: 'pain_level',
    type: 'numberInput',
    label: 'Pain Level',
    tooltip: 'Use a 0 to 10 pain scale.',
    min: 0,
    max: 10,
    isInteger: true,
    showIf: { field: 'has_pain', equals: 'yes' },
  },

  {
    id: 'right_knee_flexion',
    type: 'numberInput',
    label: 'Right Knee Flexion',
    tooltip: 'Enter degrees.',
    min: 0,
    max: 180,
    isInteger: true,
  },

  {
    id: 'right_knee_extension',
    type: 'numberInput',
    label: 'Right Knee Extension',
    tooltip: 'Enter degrees.',
    min: -30,
    max: 30,
    isInteger: true,
  },

  {
    id: 'left_knee_flexion',
    type: 'numberInput',
    label: 'Left Knee Flexion',
    tooltip: 'Enter degrees.',
    min: 0,
    max: 180,
    isInteger: true,
  },

  {
    id: 'left_knee_extension',
    type: 'numberInput',
    label: 'Left Knee Extension',
    tooltip: 'Enter degrees.',
    min: -30,
    max: 30,
    isInteger: true,
  },
]

Read through the schema to get a sense of how it works. Don't worry about understanding every little detail.

Below the editor, click Save.

Then go back to editing Curly's evaluation. (People → Patients → click Curly's PT badge → Timeline → Evaluation → Edit).

In the Basic details section, set Custom data template to "PT SNF Evaluation". This activates the schema we just created. You should see the new "Physical Therapy Evaluation" section with the subjective, pain, and knee range of motion groups and their associated fields.

Scroll down to the pain group. Set "Is pain present?" to "Yes". This should trigger the conditional logic and reveal the "Pain Location" and "Pain Level" fields.

Generate AI suggestions

Scroll to the top of the evaluation form where it says "AI context" and copy-paste the following text:

Pt is a 71 y/o M w/ hx R TKR, recently admitted s/p hospitalization for fall.

Then click Make AI suggestions.

After a few seconds, you should see a message like "3 suggestions generated".

Scroll down and peruse the form for magic wand icons 🪄. These indicate AI-generated suggestions. Hover over a magic wand to see the complete AI suggestion along with the reason for it. Click the magic wand to apply the suggestion.

Notes:

To formulate its suggestions, our AI uses...
- the AI context you provided
- the data you've already entered in the form
- additional data tied to the patient, such as the admission and other therapy cases
You can use the dictation button (🎤) to talk instead of type when filling out the AI context. You can even dictate an entire evaluation (given the patient's consent).
The AI suggestions aren't perfect. Review them carefully!

Add a treatment plan

Scroll down to the Treatment plan section. Where it says "Include a treatment plan?", select Yes.

From here, you can build all sorts of treatment plans, but the easiest way to get started is to use RehabAlpha's rule-based suggestions (indicated by a ruler icon 📏). Click the rule-based suggestion that starts with "3 treatments per week for 4 weeks".

Then pick the following treatment CPT codes:

97110 Therapeutic exercises
97112 Neuromuscular reeducation

Complete the service log

The Service log is where you specify billable services.

In the Service log section, click Add service item → then choose a CPT code 97161.

Save and review

Scroll to the bottom and click Save to save the evaluation.

Assuming you established a treatment plan, RehabAlpha goes to work preparing future clinical documents (including treatments) for your therapy case. To see this, scroll to the top of the evaluation page and click the "Case details" link.

This takes you to the therapy case page. Then scroll down to the timeline (or click Timeline in the right-side navigation). You should see the evaluation you just created along with several treatments that RehabAlpha automatically generated based on the treatment plan you selected in the evaluation. You can click on any of these cards to open the associated clinical document and review or edit it as needed.

Sign the document and request a physician signature

Go back to the evaluation by clicking the evaluation card in the case timeline. Then scroll down to the Signatures section. You should see two required signer cards.

By default, RehabAlpha sets the therapist as a required signer for each clinical document. Furthermore, for evaluations and recertifications, RehabAlpha sets the physician as a required signer. That said, you can add and remove required signers to your clinical documents as needed.

If we were signed in as the therapist, Renee Hart, we'd see a button on Renee's signer card to sign the document. But since we're not signed in as Renee, let's manually record her signature...

In order to sign and record signatures in RehabAlpha, you need a signing pin. Click the link in the banner that says "create a signing PIN" and then set up your six-digit signing pin.

Then click Record signature within Renee's signer card. Leave the defaults in place, enter your signing pin, and click Record signature.

Next, let's request and process an external signature from Dr. John Zoidberg. In his signer card, click Request signature. Modify the recipient email address to your own personal email. Then click Send request.

In a few seconds, you should receive an email with a secure signing link. Click the link, review the document, and then sign it. After that, Dr. Zoidberg's signer card (in RehabAlpha, in the evaluation page) should appear with a green "Signed" badge.

10. Review schedules

Earlier, we mentioned that creating an evaluation with a treatment plan tells RehabAlpha to automatically schedule future treatments and clinical documents. You can see this in the case timeline, but you can also see it in

the patient's schedule
the therapist's schedule, and
the facility's schedule.

Try it:

Go to the facility page for Rosewood Nursing
Click Schedule

You should be able to see Curly's scheduled treatments along with the therapist assigned to each treatment. You can alter the schedule filters to narrow the data you want to see and you can toggle the schedule view between a calendar view, a list view, and a stats view.

Next steps

Ready for more? Dive into the Guides to explore everything RehabAlpha can do.

1. Sign up​

2. Create an organization​

The dashboard​

The sidebar​

3. Add a facility​

4. Add a payor​

5. Add a physician​

6. Add a therapist​

Add a license​

7. Add a patient​

Add a coverage​

Add an admission​

8. Add a therapy case​

9. Add an evaluation​

Overview​

Select a therapist​

Add a medical diagnosis​

Implement a custom evaluation template​

Generate AI suggestions​

Add a treatment plan​

Complete the service log​

Save and review​

Sign the document and request a physician signature​

10. Review schedules​

Next steps​

1. Sign up

2. Create an organization

The dashboard

The sidebar

3. Add a facility

4. Add a payor

5. Add a physician

6. Add a therapist

Add a license

7. Add a patient

Add a coverage

Add an admission

8. Add a therapy case

9. Add an evaluation

Overview

Select a therapist

Add a medical diagnosis

Implement a custom evaluation template

Generate AI suggestions

Add a treatment plan

Complete the service log

Save and review

Sign the document and request a physician signature

10. Review schedules

Next steps