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Terry Streetman (Host): Hello, listeners. Thanks for tuning in to the Well Within Reach podcast, brought to you by Riverside Healthcare. I'm your host, Terry Streetman. And joining me today is Mitch Cronk, Manager of Outpatient Rehab at Riverside Rehabilitation & Therapy. He's here to talk about the department's advanced technology and how it delivers better patient outcomes. Thanks for joining us, Mitch.

Mitch Cronk: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Host: Of course. We love having you here. And since it's not your first time, can you just give us a quick reminder of your role and background?

Mitch Cronk: Sure, yeah. I am the Riverside Outpatient Rehab manager. I oversee our 10 clinics here and make sure operations are going well. Physical therapist by background.

Host: Awesome. Short and to the point. I love it. So , speaking of our services, what Riverside clinics offer therapy and rehabilitation?

Mitch Cronk: Sure. So, we have 10 therapy locations across the region here serving Kankakee, Bourbonnais, Coal City, Frankfort, Manteno, Watseka, and Wilmington. Those services include PT, OT, and speech, which are your common ones, and then a little more specialist. So, we have pediatrics, pelvic health, hand therapy, lymphedema, orthopedic, spine, vestibular, and neurological rehabilitation. So, the gamut of everything.

Host: Yeah, just a few services there. I love that.

Mitch Cronk: Right.

Host: And all over the community, which I think is important.

Mitch Cronk: Yeah.

Host: So with those clinics and the services we offer, why is it so important to Riverside to invest in the latest and greatest technology for that kind of therapy?

Mitch Cronk: Sure. So, technology is always growing, right? Exponentially now. And so, if we're not investing in the latest and the greatest, then we're not keeping up with the time and ultimately the highest quality we can be using for our patients. What it helps us do is it allows us to be more precise and safe in what we do. Our therapists are already great, right? We're trained, we're licensed, experienced. But now, you're starting to add in more of this advanced technology. So, the level of care is getting higher and more specialized to the patient.

Host: We love that, and great to be able to offer that close to home and not have to travel a long distance for it.

Mitch Cronk: Yep.

Host: So, what are some of the types of advanced technology then that are available at our clinics?

Mitch Cronk: Sure. So, there's all kinds of things that we're adding. You know, what I want to do is just take a minute and highlight some of those unique ones that we've been doing. So, I'll start with blood flow restriction, because this is kind of a newer type of technology in the last decade or so that's been used. And if you're a gym goer, you may see some people strap cuffs or bands around their arms, and it's like, "What are they doing?" You know?

So, blood flow restriction is exactly what it sounds like. You're trying to occlude your vessels to a limited amount to restrict blood supply. But what research has shown is under light resistance training with limited blood supply, you can cause a hypertrophy effect. So, strengthening the muscle. But I'll use an example of an ACL repair. They're obviously not going to be doing heavy squats right away. And so, how you get that muscle to grow, those quadriceps to grow without giving them heavy weight, this is a technique that can be used. And so, it's very sophisticated. It's a little more than just putting a strap around a muscle.

There is a Doppler, which is built into the cuff, or we use a Doppler to determine, like, how much your vessel's occluded. So, how much are we restricting? And that, again, that's unique to the patient. So, it's safe and effective. And then, again, we apply that, we apply exercises, light resistance training, and it just gives us another tool to help you get to where you need to be, back into your level of function. That's a big one.

Another one are these vestibular goggles that we have. And so, these are infrared goggles that zoom in on your eyes. And so, when you have vertigo or a vestibular problem, your eyes are great senses of feedback. And so, when we look at those and we put you in different positions, your eyes sometimes have a fast twitch response called a nystagmus. And that's typically a sign of having a vertigo problem. What these goggles do is allow us to view the eyes, record them, and see if that's occurring or not. And so again, another piece of technology that's elevating the care that we have and allowing us to serve these patients in a more intentional manner and more precisely as well.

So, those are two big pieces of equipment that we're using. And again, it, does come back down to the therapist using them, the training behind it, the safety, and things like that as well.

Host: Okay. Yeah. Well, before we continue our conversation and get into some more of that technology, we're going to pause to discuss the importance of primary care.

At Riverside, our primary care providers are right here in your community, offering personalized care for you and your family, close to home and connected to the specialists and services you may need. Having a primary care provider means having someone who knows you, listens to you, and helps you stay well through every stage of life, from annual checkups and preventative screenings to managing everyday concerns when they pop up, because remarkable care should never be out of reach. Remarkable care, right where you live.

To find a primary care provider who's right for you and your family, visit myrhc.net/acceptingnew.

Okay, we're back. And we're going to talk now about some other pieces of technology that the Riverside Rehabilitation and Therapy Clinics have. So, we'll start out with what is a stroboscope, and how does it help diagnose voice disorders?

Mitch Cronk: Sure. So, this is where our speech therapists come into play. You can get an assessment called a stroboscopy. And so, this is a rigid video camera that looks at your vocal cords. And so, the strobe in stroboscopy is a flashing light recorded with a video that slows down the vocal cords so you can view them.

Under real-time, vocal cords move too fast to really see them work. And so, as we know, sometimes people have voice problems. They have hoarseness, just weird things going on that our speech therapist might want to take a look at. And again, another unique piece of technology that we can utilize in our office to determine what may or may not being going on. And so essentially, it's just a high video recording of the vocal cords.

Host: Okay. We'll move on then to the Solo-Step. What is that, and what conditions does it help with?

Mitch Cronk: Yeah. This has been a huge, huge asset for us. And so, in the world of therapy, you hear a lot about strengthening and balancing and recovery. So, a Solo-Step is a track system with a harness. Probably, you can just call it a glorified zip line. I can't confirm or deny. We haven't used it for that. So, our two clinics that have it are Meadowview and Wilmington. And so, we see a lot of patients that cannot stand and walk under their own power.

A lot of times, you'll see belts around the waist; therapists transferring, helping support people as they walk in parallel bars and things like that. This essentially takes it to the next level. So now, they can walk in open, free space on the gym floor, and they have no fear of falling. So, it increases their confidence. It allows them to do things that they wouldn't typically be able to do. You'll quite often use this on patients who have had a stroke or a brain injury or a spinal cord injury, or even sometimes after surgeries where people are having a hard time walking or have confidence issues.

And so, you put this harness on. It takes one to two minutes. It's very quick, but it's a very effective way of treating these patients. And so, we've really enjoyed having those two pieces of equipment. I will say they are not cheap. And you can't easily find them either. And so, it's been a huge resource for us and the therapist.

Host: Awesome. That's great to have equipment like that and technology like that that's unique in the area or relatively. So, you mentioned strokes. I know another piece of equipment we have is Saebo devices. That can also help with recovery from stroke. Is that right? Can you explain that?

Mitch Cronk: Yeah. So, Saebo is a company that's done a great job of developing equipment to assist arm and hand positioning. And so oftentimes, after a stroke or, again, a neurological event, you lose motor control over your arm and parts of your arm. Again, our therapists are trained to work with these impairments, but what this equipment does is allows you to have more assistance in different types of activities.

And so, we'd recently received the SaeboArm. And this is a large piece of equipment. It's hydraulic powered, but you essentially hook your arm up to it, and it assists you to reach out in front of you overhead in different directions. As you can imagine, our therapists are very hands-on throughout the day.

And so, if you're doing this quite often, it can become fatiguing and difficult for therapists to do this over and over. It's also not practical to do it, like, repetitively, and that's what you need. When you have an event like this, you need repetition. And so, it allows for more frequent repetition.

And ultimately, again, it gives the therapist an independence of doing something that they typically might not be able to do. So, Saebo's done a great job. it's literally a toolbox of all kinds of different things to help move in all different directions. So, assistive devices in these movements is ultimately what they do.

Host: I didn't even realize then that covers something for speech, something for PT, something for OT and hand therapy. So, great job me writing the questions, I guess.

Mitch Cronk: That's right, yeah. Kudos to you.

Host: All right. Well, are there any other technologies that we have? You've covered so many, but I know we have a lot. Is there anything else you really want to highlight?

Mitch Cronk: Yeah. There's one more piece of equipment that we use that we have at a couple locations called the Biodex. So, this is a sensing platform that we put people on to determine sway, balance, stability, things like that, but it objectifies it. So, it puts a number to it. A lot of these tests that we do have normative data. So, we can see what normal is versus impaired.

And what we frequently use it for are people that experience concussions. And so, there is something called sway, so how much you're rocking back and forth and have difficulty controlling in different environments. We can test your sway on this piece of equipment either at baseline before concussion, which is best compared to normative data, and then track it as you make progress. But objective feedback that can kind of tell us are you recovering from that concussion. It can be used for other things too, like balance training and whatnot, but a lot of concussion protocols and things like that.

Host: Wow.

Mitch Cronk: Yeah.

Host: All right. Well, we're getting to the end here. And one question I always like to ask, if somebody's going to take away one thing, what's the biggest thing a listener should take away from this episode?

Mitch Cronk: Sure. So, rehab is advanced, it's individualized, technology is growing. But at the end of the day, it's your therapist, right? Technology's never going to replace your therapist. It's only supplemental to what the therapist is doing. And so, it's about finding the right therapist, the right piece of equipment at the right time. And so, we continue to push the envelope to be more skilled, provide high-quality care. You mentioned earlier, like, we don't want to have to drive far away to receive these services.

So, it gives us an access point to home something unique that you might not be able to get in other areas, and that's what we're striving for. But again, at the end of the day, it's back on our therapists, and they deserve all the credit for what they do.

Host: That's really important to highlight, and I think that's a big thing with Riverside is all the technology in the world is great, but it's the team we have, not just within therapy, but in our orthopedics and our primary care and all of that, I think, the people make it what it is, and that's great.

Mitch Cronk: Yeah. And I do have to give a shout-out to the organization, because this technology does not come for free, right? It's about our finances and our groups making decisions to invest in what we do and believing in what we do. And I like to believe the team has done a great job and we continue to utilize our opportunities and grow from that.

Host: Awesome.

Mitch Cronk: Yeah.

Host: Well, thank you again for joining us, Mitch. For our listeners, if you'd like to learn more about rehabilitation and therapy services at Riverside, you can visit myrhc.net/rehabilitation.

Thank you for tuning in to the Well Within Reach podcast with our guest, Mitch Cronk, and me, your host, Terry Streetman. Be sure to like and subscribe to Well Within Reach on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about the services of Riverside Healthcare, visit riversidehealthcare.org.