Almost all physiotherapy services, online and otherwise, ask you the same thing to begin with: buy a course. Ten sessions, often, to be paid for before you have spoken with anyone who has looked at your case. It is a commercially convenient arrangement for the seller, and for the buyer it is a gamble: you are deciding how much therapy you need at the exact moment when you know least about it.
We built it the other way round, and this article explains how, step by step. It is not a presentation page: it is what really happens, with the real times and prices.
If the question is simpler, namely what Ri-Hub is, the short answer is in what Ri-Hub is.
1. The questionnaire: a few questions, before anything else
You start here, not from a price list. The questions serve to understand two things: what kind of problem it is and who, among our physiotherapists, is the right person to follow it. It is not a contact form: it does not end with "we will call you back".
It takes a few minutes and asks for nothing more than what is needed for the matching. No credit card: at this point there is nothing to pay, and nothing to choose either.
2. We assign you your physiotherapist, by name
At the end of the questionnaire you do not receive a list of profiles to compare. You receive one person: name, photo, registration number on the Register.
This is a deliberate choice, and it is worth explaining. Choosing a healthcare professional yourself from a grid of photos is a task nobody is equipped to do: you do not have the information to know which specialisation your case needs, and you end up choosing on the basis of the face or the stars. The matching is done by the questionnaire on the basis of what you have described.
It remains a proposal, not a verdict: you can change physiotherapist whenever you like, without explanation.
Nor is it a different physiotherapist every time. It is the same person who does your first consultation, who follows you afterwards, who writes to you in chat between one session and the next. Continuity is not an organisational detail: it is what allows the person following you to notice that something has changed.
3. Twenty free minutes, with them
The first consultation lasts twenty minutes, is free and commits you to nothing. It is not a receptionist collecting your details, nor a sales call: it is the physiotherapist who would then follow you.
In those twenty minutes, by video call:
- you describe the problem to them, how long it has lasted and what makes it worse;
- they guide you through some movement tests in front of the camera: how far the arm goes, how you bend, where the pain appears and where it does not;
- they tell you what they think.
That "what they think" has three possible outcomes, and it is important that there are three. The first: it is a case that can be followed well at a distance, and you start. The second: something else comes first, a doctor, a test, a check, and we tell you so there and then, before you have spent anything. The third: we are not the right answer for you. It happens, and hearing it within twenty free minutes is much better than finding out at the fourth session of a package of ten.
If you want to know in detail how a first meeting unfolds and how to prepare, we have described it in what to expect at the first physiotherapy session.
4. The sessions are proposed by them, one at a time or all together
This is the step that really sets us apart, and it is also the simplest to describe: there is no package to buy blind.
After the consultation, it is the physiotherapist who proposes the sessions to you in chat. One at a time, if you prefer to proceed step by step. All together, if you have already agreed the pathway and it suits you. You accept the appointment that is most convenient for you, and you pay only for that.
It sounds like an administrative difference. It is not, and the reason is this: the number of sessions is a clinical forecast, and clinical forecasts get updated. Once you have already paid for ten sessions, that number stops being a forecast and becomes an amount to use up. If at the reassessment six were enough, or twelve were needed, whoever holds your prepaid sessions has a reason not to tell you. If you have prepaid nothing, that reason does not exist.
For this reason you will not find anywhere on our site a promise of a number of sessions. There is no standard pathway: one person will need six, another twenty, and what makes the difference is how chronic the problem is, the goals, and how much you work between sessions. If you want the real figures condition by condition, we have set them out in how many physiotherapy sessions are needed.
What it costs, in full
| format | duration | price |
|---|---|---|
| First consultation | 20 min | free |
| Group, per person | 50 min | 29,90 € |
| Individual | 30 min | 29,90 € |
| Individual long | 60 min | 49,90 € |
| Ri-Hub Junior | 50 min | 59,90 € |
Two honest clarifications about this table.
The first: the long session is not an option you choose. It is a tool of the physiotherapist, who proposes it when the case requires it: a complex assessment, or post-operative care in the early phases. It is not the "premium" version of the normal session.
The second: the invoice is for healthcare, so it is deductible at 19% on your income tax return, like any physiotherapy service.
What happens between one session and the next
The video call is the visible part, but it is not the part where you get better. That happens in the days in between: the exercises they assign you, done with the regularity that makes sense for your case.
You find them in the app, with videos, and the physiotherapist can see what you have done. The chat stays open: if an exercise bothers you, you write to them and they change it, without waiting for the next session. This is the main reason why a remote pathway can work as well as one in a clinic for many musculoskeletal problems. It is not because the video call is magic, but because the exercise at home, which is the part that counts, is finally followed rather than handed over on a sheet of paper.
What cannot be done at a distance
An article explaining how a service works must also say where that service stops, otherwise it is a brochure.
At a distance, no manual therapy is done, no hands-on work, no tecar or other instrumental therapies. An emergency is not managed: if you have had a serious injury, if you have lost strength in a limb, if there is fever or pain that does not settle in any position, the route is the emergency department or a doctor, not a questionnaire. We have written this out in full on the emergencies page, and in the first consultation it is the first thing the physiotherapist rules out.
In short
- Questionnaire: a few questions, no payment.
- Assigned physiotherapist: one person with name, photo and register number, changeable whenever you like.
- Twenty free minutes with them: a genuine assessment, with three possible outcomes, one of which is "we are not the right answer for you".
- The sessions are proposed by them: in chat, one at a time or all together. No packages to buy blind.
