Archive for January, 2009

Welcome to the Rehab & Sports Medicine Blog

Posted on January 27th, 2009 | No Comments »

Welcome to the Rehab & Sports Medicine Centers blog.  Here you will find information about all of our therapeutic services including physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and massage therapy.  I am hoping that you find this to be one of those blogs that you keep checking to see what is new, what health and wellness tips you can get and to just keep tabs on us!

To orient you, Community Health Network has nine Rehab & Sports Medicine Centers with more than 65 therapists around the Indianapolis area.  Our clinics are located in Carmel, Fishers, Castleton, Greenfield, near Community Hospital East, near Community Hospital South, and two locations in Greenwood.  We also have a Rehab & Sports Medicine Center at our Occupational Health facility on Post Road where many of our workers’ comp patients are treated.

Now that you know a little about our facilities, let me tell you a bit about myself.  My name is Andrea Brown and I work a little at all of our facilities.  I am a physical therapist assistant by background and my role with Community’s Rehab & Sports Medicine Centers includes marketing, physician relationships, customer satisfaction and of course patient care.  My goal is to keep you informed about current news and events related to our fields of expertise and related to our network.

We are very excited to start sharing the many exciting things that are happening in the therapy world and within our clinics.  Our staff has a strong background in health and wellness and our goal is to provide quality care to improve the quality of lifestyle of each patient that comes in our doors by helping them to improve their overall function and decrease pain. We have an impressive staff of therapists and we are looking forward to introducing them to you.  In addition to their professional degree, many of our staff members have advanced training in a variety of areas including orthopedics, pediatrics, women’s/men’s health, lymphedema and certified hand therapy, just to name a few.

If you need any additional information about the services or staff at Rehab & Sports Medicine Centers, please visit our Web site at eCommunity.com/Rehab.

March ‘09 Pediatric Grand Rounds with CME at Community North (Case Conference)

Posted on January 19th, 2009 | No Comments »

The pediatric hospitalists will be presenting Case Conference for Pediatric Grand Rounds in March. The conference date is March 4th, 2009.  We will not have a session in February. The case conference should prove to be both interesting and informative.

Pediatric grand rounds are generally provided monthly and are eligible for CME. We provide these offerings on the first Wednesday of the month at 7:30 am, in the multi-service conference rooms on the 3rd floor of the professional building. Coffee will be served.

If you have any questions about this, you can contact Dr. Robert Lindeman at Community North’s pediatric unit at 317-621-5474.

The Role of Sedation in Voiding Cystourethrogram (VCUG)

Posted on January 19th, 2009 | No Comments »

David Herd, M.D., in an article published in Advances in Urology in 2008, discusses the distress that children and parents experience when undergoing a VCUG procedure.  In his analysis of the literature including seven comparative studies including 2 randomized controlled trials, he found that oral Midazolam(Versed) given at 0.5-0.6 mg/kg is effective in providing anxiolysis and amnesia with no apparent effect on voiding dynamics.  It is unclear whether deeper sedating agents may interfere with voiding dynamics.  Midazolam has no analgesic properties.

Parental perceptions of the procedure are such that most parents would request some medication if it were effective, safe, and available.  We do now provide the option of sedation for pediatric VCUG at Community North Hospital.  Those individuals who are scheduling patients for VCUG will need to specify the requirement for sedation, as many children do not require sedation for VCUG.

I encourage you to evaluate Dr. Herd’s article by following the link below.

Anxiety in Children Undergoing VCUG: Sedation or No Sedation?

Community Rehab & Sports Medicine-new south side location

Posted on January 16th, 2009 | No Comments »

Library Park Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation, located at 637 South State Road 135, joined the Community Health Network umbrella of care effective January 1, 2009. Now known as Rehab & Sports Medicine-Library Park, the 8,000-square-foot outpatient facility expands Community’s rehab and sports medicine services to patients in White River Township, just west of Greenwood.

“Rehab & Sports Medicine-Library Park fits perfectly into Community’s culture,” said Betsy Sajdak, director of rehab services at Community Health Network. “This new location broadens the array of services we offer, while offering the convenient, specialized outpatient care our patients have come to expect.”

The Library Park facility has been part of the Greenwood community for 17 years, offering specialized programs in physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech language pathology. Sixteen licensed therapists serve patients of all ages for orthopedic injuries, sports injuries, work injuries, spine rehab, hand rehab/custom splinting, neurological dysfunction and pediatrics. Additionally, the center provides various exercise programs such as Pilates and osteoporosis classes.

“We are pleased to be able to offer all three services—physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech language pathology—in one location,” said Nancy Lewark, manager of Rehab & Sports Medicine-Library Park. “We look forward to enhancing the services we have offered for the past 17 years by joining the Community organization with all of its resources.”

Rehab & Sports Medicine-Library Park is Community’s second rehab and sports medicine facility serving patients on the south side of Indianapolis, joining Rehab & Sports Medicine-South Park at 98 South Park Boulevard in Greenwood.

Learn more about Community’s Rehab & Sports Medicine centers at eCommunity.com/rehab

Nominate a Community Health Network nurse!

Posted on January 14th, 2009 | No Comments »

Have Community nurses touched your life? Maybe they helped you through a difficult experience, taking the time to provide education or medical assistance, or maybe they just held your hand and listened to you. These are the nursing professionals who serve on the front lines every day to ensure you have an exceptional patient experience.

Right now there are two fantastic ways to recognize the dedicated nurses who helped make your road to health and recovery a memorable one. Deadlines are coming up fast, so take a moment to recognize a Community nurse today!

  • New this year, Nurses Rock is presented by Community Health Network in conjunction with Indy’s soft rock station B105.7. The nomination deadline is January 30. Nominate now!
  • The Indianapolis Star proudly presents its seventh annual Salute to Nurses. The deadline is February 6. Nominate now!

And so it goes.

Posted on January 13th, 2009 | No Comments »

I am convinced that the new prevailing mood or zeitgeist for 2009 is justifying your employment/project/expenditures/existence/etc.  With the economy the way it is, I’ve heard a lot of effort and discussion about statistics and calculations that I hadn’t heard before with such regularity and seriousness.

Employees helping employees this holiday season

Posted on January 8th, 2009 | No Comments »

For the third year in a row, the Community North Employee Council offered assistance to families of employees in need during the holidays. Employees donated toys, winter coats, hats, mittens, boots, diapers and wipes, socks, underwear and T-shirts to a total of 31 families with a total of 63 children. More than 1,000 gifts were distributed.
The recipients included single-parent families, dual-parent families with one parent in the military stationed overseas, and even some families where grandparents are the primary caregivers.
“They are usually low-income families that are not able to provide any gifts to their children unless they receive assistance from the caring employees of CHN,” says Linda Marlow, president of the employee council. “This year we also had a department at Community East help with several of the families.” The family names are kept confidential, and lists of their wants and needs are distributed to departments wanting to help.
“The employee council is very proud to have sponsored this program for three years,” Marlow says, “and we plan to continue this as long as there is a need.”

Community Anderson raffle supports food bank, Salvation Army

Posted on January 2nd, 2009 | No Comments »

The Second Harvest Food Bank and the Salvation Army benefited from the $600 proceeds of Community Hospital Anderson’s “Santa’s Sparkling Helpers” Christmas tree raffle.

A drawing held December 22 determined the winners of two decorated trees, which had been donated to Community Anderson in November after they were auctioned off in the annual hospital-sponsored Festival of Trees Gala at the historic Paramount Theatre. Anna Reed won the 7.5-foot tree, and Amy Hines won the 4.5-foot tree. The trees had been on display in the outpatient lobby during the raffle.

Decorated trees raffled off to two Community Hospital Anderson employees

2009 Social Media Goal

Posted on January 1st, 2009 | No Comments »

I have made a decision to restructure my social media infrastructure.  In 2008, I experimented with blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Ning and probably some others that I have forgotten.  I’ve had a few observations with this experimentation.

It’s hard to follow all the tools for social networking and hard to know which ones to use.  Facebook vs. MySpace.  Then there’s Ning.  Wordpress or Blogger.  Host your own blog or host it with a provider.  And then there’s using Twitter (microblogging) vs. WordPress, etc (long post blogging).

The functionality also overlaps.  The status in Facebook is similar to Twitter and I found myself posting the same thing to both.  I would like to be able to import my Twitter feed into Facebook, I think.

I also discovered that I prefer to post my status and blogging by my mobile phone at the moment I’m thinking about it.  I generally don’t post to my Twitter account or Facebook status except from my mobile phone.  My current blogging platform does not allow me to do that so I save the text on my phone when I blog and enter it into my blog later.

What I would like is one method to update my status and add blog entries and be able to do this through a mobile device.  I think if I can hook Twitter up to my Facebook page, I will use Facebook as my central location.