FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Absolutely! You are able to change your appointment time by navigating to your Jane App, and making changes under “Upcoming Appointments, or by contacting our athlete experience administrator Kelsi Harris at [email protected] or via phone at 587-586-0869. Our practitioners only monitor their emails during certain office hours, and as such, the above would be the best pathway!

For appointments outside of the 24-hour cancellation policy, you can change your appointment time by navigating to your Jane App, and making changes under “Upcoming Appointments”, or by contacting our athlete experience administrator Kelsi Harris at [email protected] or via phone at 587-586-0869.  For cancellations or changes within the 24-hour policy, you will see a “Contact to Change” button. At ORKA, we hold both our client’s and our staff’s time to a high standard. As such, our 24-hour cancellation policy is enforced with the responsibility of full payment of the assessment or treatment fee, as our practitioners quite often have waitlists, and typically are unable to fill a last-minute slots, leaving injured individuals on the waitlist needing similar care unable to attend.

All scheduling and changes are handled by our athlete experience administrator. Our therapists are unable to facilitate this request, as they often only check their emails during certain office hours. Our admin would love to help, and she can be reached at 587-586-0869 or at [email protected]

The Jane App will show all available appointments for your chosen practitioner for the week. Given the 1:1 nature of our clinic and practice, our therapists have limited availability. Should certain times work for your schedule, you are free to navigate to your Jane App and “block-book” those times that suit you best at the frequency outlined by your physiotherapist. Should we need to cancel visits due to a full recovery, we can do so easier than extending therapists hours to fit clients into the schedule.

Yes. If there is an issue that cannot be resolved via e-mail, or via this FAQ page, our therapists have the capacity to book a phone call. These calls are billed at $20.

Yes. At ORKA, our session structure ensures you are being seen in a 1:1 capacity with your therapist at all times. Quite often, your diagnosis may be linked to mechanical findings at the joint, or above and below. In certain cases, things in the upper body can drive problems in the lower limb, and vice versa.

The body is complex, and this can hold true when things on one side of the body, drive pain and dysfunction on the other. Within reason, our therapists have the ability and time to manage multiple sites. However, we are comprehensive with our rehabilitation plans, and this may mean that you have 2 different treatment plans, 2 different exercise programs, and 2 different prognosis’ (e.g., your hamstring strain will be a 4–6-week rehabilitation, your achilles tendon pain will be a 4–6-month rehabilitation). 

Your therapist will lay out the roadmap to allow you to make decisions on whether you wish to focus on one injury site, or multiple.

No. ORKA is open to all demographics and populations. We love treating active and motivated individuals, whether they be trying to return to sport, or trying to more efficiently lift their grandkids or return to that summer hike. We do not take motor vehicle collision claims or Workers Compensation Board (work related injury) claims. We do not have an AHS contract for low-income families or for the free visits post fracture or post-surgery.

From the Physiapp login page, please enter your email and click “reset password”. Physiapp will send a link to this e-mail to reset your password which should allow the login.

From the Jane App login page, navigate to “Forgot username or password” at the bottom of the page. From there, you will be able to reset your login credentials. You may also login via Facebook, Google or Twitter by clicking these icons.

Our rehabilitation team at ORKA are diligent and comprehensive about the way that they create your rehabilitation program, and want to ensure there is not 4-5 random exercises scribbled on a piece of paper. Rehabilitation is often complex, and requires complex and comprehensive solutions. After the Initial Assessment, they will dive into your clinical exam findings, looking at both your diagnosis (“The What”) and the mechanics that they feel may be driving or has led to this issue (“The Why”). You will receive a program either on Physiapp or TeamBuildr. If you haven’t received an e-mail in 48-72 hours post initial assessment, please check your junk mail/spam folder for these emails. After 48-72 hrs, should you not have received an e-mail, please notify our Athlete Experience Administrator Kelsi Harris at [email protected], and she will communicate to your attending therapist, as our therapists only monitor their emails during set office hours.

If there are exercises within your program that you have not gone through with your physiotherapist, you can defer them until your next appointment, or move your appointment to a sooner date to go over the exercise in question. The parameters of your exercises (sets/reps/rest/tempo) should be listed within the program itself. If you are unsure how to navigate this, you can book a phone call or book an appointment to review the program with your physiotherapist.

While we often wish to land on a diagnosis and treatment plan in as comfortable way as possible, many orthopedic tests performed clinically can be “provocative”. It would not be unusual for a client to feel some increases in discomfort in the 24 hours post assessment. What to expect will be outlined by your physiotherapist, as well as when these increases may be of concern. As a general rule, if the pain increase has dissipated after 24 hours, we would deem this as a typical response to the initial exam. If the pain intensity is 8-10/10 and is constant, please contact our athlete experience administrator at [email protected] or 587-586-0869 so that she may relay to your provider. Should this be deemed a medical emergency, please dial 811, or proceed to your nearest medical emergency facility for further evaluation and care.

In certain scenario’s, some low-grade discomfort/pain with the exercises while loading certain tissues would be expected, and may even be beneficial. One of the biggest differences between traditional strength training and rehabilitation, is that we are often loading tissues in the presence of injury, and occasionally, inflammation/structural damage. However, we want your pain to remain stable. This means that if you are a 5/10 pain (0 being no pain, 10 being the most pain you’ve ever experienced) daily, that the next morning and afternoon you are still a 5/10. If you are an 8/10 daily, and the next morning and afternoon you are an 8/10, despite those pain levels being high, you are remaining stable. If there is large spikes in pain (by 3-4 points or more), or if there is morning stiffness extending past 4-5 hours, please cease the exercises until you are able to review with your attending therapist at your subsequent visit. You can trial removing certain exercises to try and identify which is the most provocative, while keeping in exercises that were given that do not seem to provoke your symptoms. If you are able to land on what exercise is creating discomfort, please relay this to your therapist so they can troubleshoot what may be leading to the irritation.

If there is an extended health benefit plan on file, our athlete experience admin will try and bill these benefits. At ORKA, we unfortunately are only able to bill certain extended health benefit plans. Should there be an issue, please contact our athlete experience admin at [email protected]  or by phone at 587-586-0869. If a plan is not billed, you will be provided with a receipt/invoice with the practitioners Physiotherapy Alberta credentials, so that you may submit this manually for reimbursement consideration.