AI exposure: Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Physicians
Diagnose and treat disorders requiring physiotherapy to provide physical, mental, and occupational rehabilitation.
Reading this score
computedAt 11.9% of weighted task load, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Physicians sits at the 18th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 60.8% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is verification cost. Across this occupation's 15 tasks it averages 2.87 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, checking the output costs more than producing it. Where an undetected error is expensive, dangerous or irreversible, the economics change. Someone has to verify the work, and verifying can cost as much as doing it. This is the friction most likely to fall as tools for checking improve.
The most exposed thing this job does is Document examination results, treatment plans, and patients' outcomes, at 53.3%. The least is Conduct physical tests, at 3.3%. A gap of 50.0% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within healthcare practitioner and technical occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 18.5% across the group's 89 roles, with 75 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 15 tasks, 2 are currently banded exposed, 4 assisted and 9 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 1.53 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 1.57 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 2.07 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 2.80 | 0-3 |
| Context | 2.00 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 2.87 | 0-3 |
Task by task
15 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document examination results, treatment plans, and patients' outcomes. | 53.3% | 46.7% | 0.0% | 4.86 | exposed |
| Develop comprehensive plans for immediate and long-term rehabilitation, including therapeutic exercise, speech and occupational therapy, counseling, cognitive retraining, patient, family or caregiver education, or community reintegration. | 26.7% | 23.3% | 50.0% | 4.77 | exposed |
| Monitor effectiveness of pain management interventions, such as medication or spinal injections. | 13.3% | 36.7% | 50.0% | 4.70 | assisted |
| Consult or coordinate with other rehabilitative professionals, including physical and occupational therapists, rehabilitation nurses, speech pathologists, neuropsychologists, behavioral psychologists, social workers, or medical technicians. | 13.3% | 36.7% | 50.0% | 4.59 | assisted |
| Coordinate physical medicine and rehabilitation services with other medical activities. | 13.3% | 36.7% | 50.0% | 4.33 | assisted |
| Diagnose or treat performance-related conditions, such as sports injuries or repetitive-motion injuries. | 8.3% | 41.7% | 50.0% | 4.41 | assisted |
| Prescribe orthotic and prosthetic applications and adaptive equipment, such as wheelchairs, bracing, or communication devices, to maximize patient function and self-sufficiency. | 6.7% | 18.3% | 75.0% | 4.45 | untouched |
| Prescribe physical therapy to relax the muscles and improve strength. | 6.7% | 18.3% | 75.0% | 4.27 | untouched |
| Prescribe therapy services, such as electrotherapy, ultrasonography, heat or cold therapy, hydrotherapy, debridement, short-wave or microwave diathermy, and infrared or ultraviolet radiation, to enhance rehabilitation. | 6.7% | 18.3% | 75.0% | 4.23 | untouched |
| Instruct interns and residents in the diagnosis and treatment of temporary or permanent physically disabling conditions. | 5.0% | 20.0% | 75.0% | 3.94 | untouched |
| Examine patients to assess mobility, strength, communication, or cognition. | 3.3% | 21.7% | 75.0% | 4.82 | untouched |
| Assess characteristics of patients' pain, such as intensity, location, or duration, using standardized clinical measures. | 3.3% | 21.7% | 75.0% | 4.71 | untouched |
| Provide inpatient or outpatient medical management of neuromuscular disorders, musculoskeletal trauma, acute and chronic pain, deformity or amputation, cardiac or pulmonary disease, or other disabling conditions. | 3.3% | 21.7% | 75.0% | 4.68 | untouched |
| Perform electrodiagnosis, including electromyography, nerve conduction studies, or somatosensory evoked potentials of neuromuscular disorders or damage. | 3.3% | 21.7% | 75.0% | 4.33 | untouched |
| Conduct physical tests, such as functional capacity evaluations, to determine injured workers' capabilities to perform the physical demands of their jobs. | 3.3% | 21.7% | 75.0% | 3.85 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.