Each day, nearly half the residents are scheduled to be seen in Rehabilitation. That works out to approximately 3,000 residents a year and 24,000 visits. A broad complement of services is provided to the Home’s residents by a highly-trained staff of licensed therapists and aides.
The Home’s physical therapists design an individual plan of care for each resident/patient so that they may achieve the highest quality of life. Maintaining individuals at their maximum level of functional independence involves decreasing their pain, increasing their strength, flexibility, gait, and safety awareness.
Occupational therapists use meaningful, purposeful activity to help residents/patients increase or maintain their highest level of independence. Areas of treatment include self-care or activities of daily living, wheelchair mobility, contracture management, energy conservation, adaptive equipment, safety, and caregiver training.
The Herbst Fitness Center is filled with a variety of senior-appropriate and state-of-the-art workout equipment, such as this NuStep machine.
Individuals with communication and swallowing deficits benefit from working with the Home’s speech therapists. By improving speech patterns and/or providing instruction in the use of speech assistive devices, the therapists enhance residents’ ability to communicate with staff, family, and friends. The speech therapist also performs swallowing evaluations and treatments, identifying a person’s level of swallowing and recommending specific diet choices and swallowing/feeding strategies. This ensures that the person is able to eat safely, and maintain or improve their nutritional status.
The functional maintenance and exercise program continues the work with the therapists and achievements reached by residents/patients. Under the supervision of the therapists, rehabilitation aides administer individually designed programs for each patient that address pain management, maintain or increase strength, endurance and flexibility, and improve their ability to ambulate.
The Home’s director of Rehabilitation practices what he preaches (and provides), taking full advantage of the equipment available in the Herbst Fitness Center.
Herbst Fitness Center: Available to residents (with medical approval) and staff. A full-time fitness center manager designs individualized exercise programs to increase strength and endurance. Participants may work out on treadmills, exercise bicycles, and strengthening equipment that utilizes air pressure versus weights for resistance, or use free weights and exercise balls. Cardio equipment comes complete with televisions.
Massage Therapy (weekly): A certified massage therapist delivers a relaxing massage to reduce tension, stress, and pain.
Low Vision (monthly): Upon referral, a member of the National Association for the Visually Handicapped assesses the low vision needs of residents and provides equipment to improve their visual acuity.
Repetitive Motion Injury Program (ongoing): Through the combined efforts of the Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy departments, staff of the Jewish Home is provided with training, education, and worksite evaluation to decrease the potential for incurring a repetitive motion injury.
Residents benefit from personal treatment plans developed by the Home’s highly skilled physical and occupational therapists.
