Friday, August 8, 2008 9:08 PM CDT
Carle offers new services at business park facility
By NATHANIEL WEST, Staff Writer
nwest@jg-tc.com
CHARLESTON — They call it the “quad mill.”
While your upper body remains vertical and motionless, a gyrating platform works your legs like a mogul field beneath a freestyle skier.
You really feel the burn after a minute or so, according to Sean Fadale, director of Carle Therapy Services.
It’s one of the few quad mills in this region of the state.
“We’re now able to offer some very specialized care,” said Fadale.
This machine is part of the enlarged arsenal at the newly opened Carle Foundation facility west of Charleston. In addition to physical therapy and sports medicine services, the renovated building in the Coles Business Park also houses Carle Home Health offices and the soon-to-be-open Carle Sleep Disorders Center.
“This investment in the (business park) further demonstrates our commitment (to) Coles County,” said David Cook, vice president of physician practice management for the Carle Foundation.
In fact, the relocation of Home Health and Therapy Services to the new center helps with the expansion plans at the Carle Foundation Physician Services clinic east of Mattoon. Therapy Services were housed in modular units on the clinic site, and these units will be removed before Carle raises the walls of a 7,000-square-foot expansion there.
In addition to making room at CFPS, the transition to the business park also allows Carle to grow its therapy services, and to bring another sleep disorders center to Coles County (Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center already operates a sleep lab).
Previously, Carle patients suffering from sleep disorders — sleep apnea in most cases — had to travel to Urbana for the overnight sleep study, in which a host of various measuring devices are attached to the patient. A technician in another room monitors breathing, heart rate and movement. The two-bed sleep lab at the business park facility is equipped with infrared lighting and specialized cameras as well.
“We’re really proud to be able to provide this service in the community,” said William Vogel, director of pulmonary services at Carle Foundation Hospital.
The sleep lab is backed by the Carle Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Urbana; in fact, sleep study participants may use “telemedicine” services at CFPS to communicate with specialists at the Urbana center: During an on-site examination, audio and video data are transmitted to a physician in Urbana.
Brenda Ross, manager of the sleep lab, described telemedicine as “a teleconference, but there’s equipment attached so they can do what they’d do in a doctor’s office.”
Therapy Services, meanwhile, saw its space triple in size with the relocation to the business park.
Along with physical and occupational therapy, speech language pathology, sports medicine and injury evaluation, Carle now boasts such specialty services as occupational rehabilitation; hand rehabilitation; foot therapy; pediatric/development therapy; and a seating and wheeled mobility clinic.
Therapy Services also offers lymphedema therapy to combat swelling following damage to the lymphatic system from cancer treatments or injury or surgery involving lymph nodes.
“Our job is to get people back to living,” said Fadale.
Carle Home Health, comprising Carle Hospice and Carle Home Care, moved into the Park Drive building after Dynamic Homecare in Charleston sold its home care and hospice components to Carle Foundation Hospital in 2007.
Home Health’s staff increased by about 75 percent with the move to the business park. It now employs eight nurses, two therapists, a chaplain and other professionals, said Diane Wasson, director of Carle Home Health.
Employees also use laptop computers and other technology to work “truly in the community,” said Wasson.
Additionally, Carle Home Health operates “Infusion,” in which patients are equipped with portable devices to administer pharmaceuticals that otherwise would require a visit to a hospital or clinic.
Contact Nathaniel West at nwest@jg-tc.com or 238-6860.
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