Rehab Center Specialties

After a surgery you may be asked to participate in physical therapy to rebuild your strength, range of motion, and possibly other areas related to your recovery. At the Bridge Care Suites, we employ a multitude of physical therapists and physical therapy assistants to help in your recovery. Since physical therapy care paths vary from specialist to specialist, we are happy to participate in your surgeon’s care path during your recovery.

If you are due to receive occupational therapy, you can expect your Occupational Therapist to help you acclimate yourself to daily tasks that we normally take for granted such as climbing a flight of stairs or putting dishes back in a pantry. At the Bridge Care Suites, we employ both Occupational Therapists and Occupational Therapy Assistants to ensure that your reintegration into your home life is seamless and geared toward helping you readjust to independent or assisted living.

If you have orders to receive speech therapy, it could mean any number of things. At the Bridge Care Suites, our Speech Therapists are equipped to assist in several different areas aside from speech language. Our therapists can also help with swallow evaluations and therapy, dietary suggestions, cognitive therapy, and more. Depending on the reason for your need, you’ll be matched with a skilled therapist to have you back in the best condition possible in no time.

VitalStim Therapy® is a safe and effective treatment for patients suffering with difficulty swallowing or dysphagia. It was developed in response to the 15 million Americans living with dysphagia today. VitalStim® Therapy is a non-invasive, external electrical stimulation therapy cleared to market by the FDA in December 2002. The therapy uses specifically designed electrodes applied to the muscles of the throat to promote proper swallowing. No other Neuromuscular Electric Stimulation (NMES) therapy carries FDA clearance for the treatment of dysphagia.

The use of high-energy sound waves to treat painful muscles or joints to ease tension. An ultrasound machine is utilized by a physical or occupational therapist to target sound waves onto a specific part of a patient’s body. This method is typically used for patients suffering from some condition of arthritis.

This method of therapy utilizes deep heat therapy to control pain and increase blood flow to muscles that may be damaged or to arthritic areas. Unlike ultrasound, diathermy utilizes target heat waves to treat various conditions that may be helped by heat therapy.

This training focuses on lengthening the amount of time needed between bathroom breaks. There are 3 types of incontinence – Urge, Stress, and Mixed. Urge incontinence happens when the need to use the bathroom strikes suddenly. Stress incontinence occurs when pressure on the lower stomach is caused by laughing, coughing, or other involuntary pressure. Mixed incontinence is a combination of both. Our training focuses on helping to lengthen the amount of times per visit to the bathroom, and to lessen the amount of accidental movements that a patient experiences.

Physical therapists often use a variety of modalities to treat sore and weak muscles. Modalities will often utilize hot and cold packs to help ease pain in sore muscles and to strengthen and heal targeted muscle groups. Hot packs are typically wrapped in several layers of cloth to increase circulation and loosen tense muscle areas and cause the muscle area to relax. Patients that have experienced severe muscle tension, spasms, or strains are treated regularly with this form of modality therapy. Cold packs are used by physical therapists to also treat areas of inflammation. A cold gel substance is wrapped in layers of wet cloth and applied directly to the affected area. The cold pack serves to decrease inflammation, pain, swelling, and discomfort.

Physical & Occupational therapists regularly utilize stretching exercises to flex and extend muscle groups in order to expand the distance of flexed or extended muscle groups. These exercises are used to help residents regain confidence in regular daily tasks such as simply reaching for a coffee cup or tying their shoes. Regular range of motion exercises are a proven way to extend the usability of muscle groups especially for the elderly.

If you are experiencing difficulty in basic movement, you may receive gait training. Gait training aims at assisting people improve ambulation and motor skills to a point where they are safe and easy to perform for a patient. Often times, coordination and balance exercises are used to increase performance and most participants will notice a marked improvement in distance and endurance while performing these tasks.

Physical & Occupational Therapists often perform wound therapy in conjunction with our nursing department. Wound therapy is the practice of helping the body heal a wound through its naturally performing systems. Therapists will not only give concentrated acute care to wounds through dressing changes, but will removed dead tissue and skin around the wound, apply sutures and stitches, and focus on continual cleaning of the wound. Removal of foreign particles is also used if needed to prevent infection or widening of the wounds. This double shot of wound care aids in expediting the healing process.

This therapy is typically incorporated into various other levels and types of therapy. Strength training can help a patient regain control, strength, and confidence in the targeted muscle and joint group. By continually working to strengthen the body, this form of therapy is useful in the aid of other therapy disciplines involving mobility. Typically, some form of weights or resistance instruments are utilized in small increments and gradually increased as muscle strength increases.

When an individual is participating in cognitive therapy, they will receive a focused, problem-solving psychotherapy that has been proven effective in the treatment of many mental health problems such as memory loss, depression, panic, anxiety disorders, and even chronic pain, hypertension, and fibromyalgia just to name a few. Through skilled problem-solving exercises, the therapist and patient focus on changing the emotional response of the patient for certain activities with the goal of assisting in the expression of appropriate emotional reflex in day-to-day events.

This piece of therapy center equipment is unique to Geriatric care in Springfield. The Sci-Fit Cycle was developed to account for the many different skill levels of motor function that an elderly person may experience. It also focuses on post-acute care for patients that may not typically be able to take part in therapeutic programs. The Sci-Fit Cycle focuses on providing various levels of upper and lower body exercise depending on the need and skill level of each patient. Those levels are passive, active-passive, and active. With passive, a patient receives full assistance from the motor-assisted device in order to exercise the extremities until they are able to move on to a higher level of motor function. With active-passive, the patient only receives partial motor assistance and begins to rely on their own strength. With active, there is no motor assistance, and the patient participates in the exercises utilizing their own strength.

Individuals receiving swallow therapy from our Therapy staff typically have had an event or illness that has prevented them from the normal ability to eat and drink. Swallow therapy is used to retrain a patient how to properly consume food and beverages again while reducing the risk of choking or blocking the air way. Swallow therapy is normally seen in patients that have suffered from a stroke or head/spinal injury, have dementia, or some other neuromuscular disorder. While all of these have the likelihood of requiring other therapy treatments in conjunction with swallow therapy, this is merely one of the many forms to help improve quality of life for a patient.

There are several medical reasons that may lead to the need for a speech language therapy. If an individual is suffering from a mental illness or a motor speech disorder, there may be a need to learn or re-learn vital communication skills. Speech therapists will evaluate the needs and identify other equipment that may assist in a patient’s communication ability. A focus will be put on activities that promote speech or other forms of communication if speech is not an option, and other specialized speech programs may be designed to promote learning/re-learning and improved quality of life.

As people age, they often find difficulty in their bed mobility. Rising from bed or transferring in and out of bed becomes extremely difficult. Bed mobility focuses on training an individual to safely and effectively adjust to the difficulties of aging with regard to mobility. Therapeutic exercises focusing on flexion strength, torso strength and lateral trunk strength and balance are utilized to aid in this therapy with the aid of other equipment that can be used for transfers if necessary.

In some cases, a therapist may assign a wheel chair as part of an individual patient’s equipment needs. If a risk of falling is present or a person has a history of repeated falls, they may require a wheelchair. In this case, simple training for how to effectively use a wheelchair is given. In this way, a person still maintains their independence to freely move around without the dependency of having aid to move the wheelchair.

This therapy technique is used to improve balance, coordination, posture, and muscle memory. While there are various exercises and techniques that can be utilized for this process, the most common exercises focus on reintroducing the body to the feel of each body position. The positions and movement help the patient to understand the motion and movement of the body while performing basic tasks. The patient can then begin to perform basic functions with more confidence in the body’s ability to sustain weight and pressure in these positions. This process is vital to other forms of therapeutic exercise and their success.

These exercises can be targeted to specific musculoskeletal groups or to wide areas of the body to improve a variety of different issues. Often times, in a skilled nursing setting, an individual’s exercises are tailored to improve ambulation, coordination, balance, circulation, and respiratory capabilities. However, these exercises provide many more useful benefits to other ailments and health issues aside from the obvious benefits of overall improvement in health and endurance.

Our unique program focuses on every person’s right to independent living. During your reintegration phase training, our team of therapists will visit your home or the place where you look to stay after you have been discharged from the Bridge Care Suites. Upon evaluating your home for possible areas of difficulty such as flights of stairs, basic daily tasks, height of cabinets, a targeted schedule of therapy will be implemented to focus on enabling total independence when you arrive at home. Ensuring that you are prepared for every necessary function while you are at home not only aids in day to day quality of life, but helps in the prevention of possible incident causing areas in your home.