Joey Wahler (Host): It's now providing patients access to on-campus physical therapy appointments. So, we're discussing the treatments and services available through MIT Health's new partnership with Bay State Physical Therapy. Our guests, Dr. Shawn Ferullo, Deputy Chief Health Officer at MIT Health; Ben Rose, a Doctor of Physical Therapy, and the Managing Partner of Bay State Physical Therapy, and Alexandra Leon, also a doctor of Physical Therapy, and the Clinic Manager of Bay State Physical Therapy campus location at MIT Health.

This is Conversations with MIT Health. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Joey Wahler. Welcome to all of you.

Shawn Ferullo, MD: Thank you, Joey.

Ben Rose, DPT: Thank you.

Host: Great to have you aboard. So first, let's start with you, Dr. Ferullo. Tell us a little bit about yourself professionally and how long have you been with MIT Health?

Shawn Ferullo, MD: Yeah. So, I am a Family Medicine Sports Medicine physician by training. I have been taking care of patients here in a Sports Medicine capacity on MIT's campus since 2005 and have been employed by MIT Health directly since 2012.

Host: And Ben, how about a bit about your background and how long you've been with Bay State Physical Therapy?

Ben Rose, DPT: Yes, I graduated from Northeastern University and have been practicing in the local Cambridge area pretty much since then. I've been at Bay State Physical Therapy since 2020, where I've had the opportunity to open three clinics over the last four years. And we're excited to be opening up at MIT in a couple weeks now.

Host: And Alexandra, can I call you Alex, by the way?

Alexandra Leon, DPT: Absolutely. That's fine.

Host: How about your background and tenure with Bay State Physical Therapy?

Alexandra Leon, DPT: Sure. So, I've been in the field for many years in various settings since 2011, but I am a new addition to the team at Bay State. So, I'll be taking on this clinic manager role. And I've been joining Ben, treating a lot of orthopedic patients in another one of our locations.

Host: Great. So back to you, Dr. Ferullo, a couple of questions about this new partnership between MIT Health and Bay State Physical Therapy. First off, how did it come about?

Shawn Ferullo, MD: Yeah. We're super excited about this partnership. As our patients have evolved and our needs have changed, we're really looking at the ability of what services could we bring into our department, our clinic to really aid and assist our patients in getting high quality care, care that is highly collaborative and partnerships-based.

And as our Sports Medicine and Orthopedic Department and our primary care service and other services have continued to care for patients, this opportunity to have a direct partner who's within our space, within our building to allow collaboration between the treating providers and the physical therapist and really be able to coordinate that care is something that we very much have looked for and been excited by and was really the precipice of looking forward to this partnership here.

Host: And so, this makes physical therapy now available to students, student athletes, employees and their families, and even retirees, right? So, why physical therapy and why this particular partnership?

Shawn Ferullo, MD: Yeah. So, it's a great question. I think as what we are seeing as the Kendall Square area and Cambridge continues to grow and populate, there are certainly clinics in the area for physical therapy. But in terms of care that is close by, convenient, highly collaborative, and timely, there's been more and more challenges of access or partnerships, not impossible, but really got us thinking about how could we do this better. And, you know, we really looked into our community to groups that we were familiar with and groups that we have partnered and shared patients with over the years. And certainly, Bay State Physical Therapy has been a huge partner for us and caring for our patients. And that really started the conversations. And it's been a really great fit. And I'm personally super excited to get this moving, and have it really grow and develop together.

Host: And so, Ben, tell us a little bit about Bay State Physical Therapy. How about some logistics first? How long have you been around? How many locations do you have in New England?

Ben Rose, DPT: Yeah, Bay State Physical Therapy was initially founded in the mid-90s. And since then, we've grown to be the largest physical therapy provider in New England. We're within five states, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, and New York. In Massachusetts, we are the largest physical therapy provider, and we're located from coast to the Berkshires.

We specialize in treating really anything and everything. I'd say orthopedics and musculoskeletal conditions are our primary treatment classifications. However, we specialize in numerous different presentations. We look forward to providing that specialty care where we are incredibly focused on access and reducing wait times to the MIT community.

Host: And so, picking up on that, Alex, what would you say are some of the specific services and treatments being offered at the Bay State Physical Therapy campus location in particular?

Alexandra Leon, DPT: Yeah. So, we've got a nice variety of services that will be available to our patients. So as each patient comes through our door, they'll be evaluated by a physical therapist to kind of determine what specific services and treatments are going to be best suited for their impairments and those functional limitations.

So, some of those include a range of modalities, strength and conditioning, balance training, and gait and functional ambulation training. We'll be doing dry needling, soft tissue mobilization, which can also include some trigger point therapy and fascial mobilization, joint mobilizations, post-concussion and vestibular therapy, blood flow restriction training, video gait analysis for running, plyometrics, weightlifting, to name a few.

So, the hope with each of these, of course, is to improve each person's ability to return to those activities of daily living and those functional tasks that are meaningful to them.

Host: Gotcha. And so, along those lines, Dr. Ferullo, for those unfamiliar with physical therapy, how would you explain how it helps things like pain management and post-surgical outcomes?

Shawn Ferullo, MD: Yeah, certainly. I think the further I get into my career, the more I treat patients, the more you recognize differences in muscle movement patterns, muscle imbalances, flexibility issues, which often are the reasons and causes to you. the presenting complaint, or the pain complaint that the patient is having.

Physical therapy and physical therapists are amazingly trained, quite frankly, at detecting these imbalances, detecting these restricted movement patterns, and really doing the corrective action, and then incorporating the appropriate modalities, as Alex just mentioned a bunch of them with needling and other techniques to be able to assist in that pain control and reduction of pain to then be able to address the recovery of the restrictions and the muscle imbalances. So, it is really bringing people through all of those components and helping them feel better.

Host: And then Ben, switching gears just a little bit, how would you say physical therapy helps for things like improved movement, performance, and recovery from injuries?

Ben Rose, PT: Yes, physical therapists, we are truly movement specialists. That's what we focus on. And that's our goal is to get our patients speed to be able to move more fluidly without pain. We incorporate a lot of the treatment techniques that shawn and Alex have mentioned. We use manual therapy quite substantially to address impairments and improve range of motion. And then, we work on a lot of strengthening, functional training, and neurological re-education to improve motion and control. And that all leads to that kind of improvement in our patient's functional capacity.

Host: And Alex, for you, physical therapy also helps chronic illness management and fall prevention, especially for older people. Tell us a little bit about that, if you would.

Alexandra Leon, DPT: Yeah. So, that's a big part of our job as well is, you know, of course as physical therapists, our goal to help patients heal for whatever it is that ails them. We often see patients at various levels of acuity. So, they may have some new onset of symptoms, or they may be dealing with something a little bit more chronic that's been holding them back from their life. But either way, we utilize those skills we mentioned previously for the interventions, really to kind of provide patients with the resources they need to feel empowered to kind of take their life back in the way that they want to.

And a big piece of our plan of care is always education, patient education, often in the form of home exercise program, things that they can really take the things they've mastered in PT and carry that over into their lifestyle. That's really the aim. So, you know, sometimes that chronic illness management may warrant some collaboration with the referring physician and maybe a worthwhile conversation, but our aim is always to just allow that patient to kind of take back their life and live well.

And touching on fall prevention, that's of course a big aim of ours. That's a big goal across the lifespan. But especially as patients age, you know, we do a lot of fall prevention for the purpose of course of injury reduction. And that often looks like balance training for us. So, we do a lot of static balance training initially with patients. And then, as they continue to progress, we really start to incorporate more challenging dynamic balance type tasks to really again carry that over into those real life activities that they're trying to get back to. So, the balance training in coordination really with that global core and lower extremity strengthening is really how we try to make sure that the patient is stable and returning to those activities of daily living and navigating their environment.

Host: Dr. Ferullo, how about explaining for us, please, any of the insurance logistics that need to happen before a patient can utilize these Bay State services on campus?

Shawn Ferullo, MD: Yeah, certainly. We will be partnering with the patients of MIT Health. We will be partnering along with Bay State. And oftentimes we'll have patients of our clinics who are seen, evaluated and have an order or request from their treating provider. From an insurance logistics standpoint, their MIT Health Insurance or the plans that they have will be very similar as if they were seeing a physical therapy group outside of our building. But this partnership and the collaboration that will be allowed for the clinical partnerships will, you know, bring that care closer, will bring that coordination closer and then allow the insurance pieces that would function as they do outside of our clinic to follow through the same processes within our building as well.

Host: And Doctor, anything else that participating providers should know about this partnership?

Shawn Ferullo, MD: Yeah, I think it's a great question. I think many of our providers are already very familiar with the Bay State Physical Therapy Group and especially their Central Square office, which is not too far from us already. I think part of what I would want those providers to know is to really get to know physical therapists who are partnering with us, that ability to have a stronger relationship and know each other and know how we can rely on each other and how we can use each other to get patients have better outcomes. And so, really familiarize themselves with the services and both the people and really build those relationships, which I think just helps bring the care that we all know how to do even to a higher level.

Host: Couple of other things, one being, Alex, the word exciting has been used a lot in our chat so far. What's most exciting to you about this partnership?

Alexandra “Alex” Leon, PT: Yeah, it is exciting. It's an exciting prospect kind of working closely to serve this patient population. It seems like such a wonderful patient population with an already really well established health network. Dr. Ferullo and his team have already been doing some great work. So, I'm excited to be right next door and to really be under the same roof and really being able to closely collaborate. I think that's going to be a very interesting and unique, but also very positive setup that we'll have. So, I'm really looking forward to that and doing our best to serve this patient population. Get them moving.

Host: And Ben, how about you? I mean, this is a partnership involving two very well known entities to say the very least in the New England area, sort of a partnership of the Titans, right?

Ben Rose, DPT: That's for sure. Yeah. We've been closely working with mIT Health and the amazing orthopedic and primary care physicians for years. And, you know, the ability to now be sharing a space and, you know, have easy collaboration is just going to be a game changer for our patients. Oftentimes, the biggest challenge that we have as providers is being able to get in touch with each other. There's so many barriers. There's time in particular. So, the fact that we can just pop on over to the room next door and knock on the door and say, "Hey, Dr. Ferullo, what were you thinking with this patient" Is going to be huge for us.

Host: And in summary for you, Dr. Ferullo, how would you kind of capsulize the overall benefits of MIT Health for our audience when we talk about the unique needs of the MIT community?

Shawn Ferullo, MD: Yeah, I think that's a great question and certainly near to and dear to our mission. You know, it is amazing to be embedded in a community, to be part of that community, to know your community, and be able to provide care to that community. So, I think we are always looking at understanding the pressures and the constraints on our MIT community and patients, how to provide the care they need in ways that are efficient, high value, high need, and also highly collaborative to be efficient with their time and help people get better, to the best of their abilities and our abilities and get that function back so that they can return to the work that they're doing either in the classroom or the research lab or around the world. And that's something we in all of our clinical services take very seriously of how we can provide care in ways that we know our community and can help them get what they need even more efficiently. It's something that's very important to us.

Host: You make a great point at the end there, Doctor. The fact that in some cases, you're getting people back on their feet so they can get back to doing groundbreaking work that could literally help change the world, right? We've got to get them back in action.

Shawn Ferullo, MD: That is the plan and that is the hope. From studying to groundbreaking research to all the things to recreational sports, all the things that they value and need, 100%.

Host: Well, folks, we trust you're now more familiar with MIT Health's new partnership with Bay State Physical Therapy. Thanks again to all three of you. Good luck with the new venture and keep up the great work.

Shawn Ferullo, MD: Thank you for having us, Joey.

Ben Rose, DPT: Thank you so much, Joey. This was great.

Alexandra Leon, DPT: Thanks so much.

Host: Absolutely. And for more information or to connect with a provider, please visit health.mit.edu. If you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social media. I'm Joey Wahler. And thanks again for being part of Conversations with MIT Health.