A new physical-rehabilitation center in the Port Allen area should come as a relief to West-side residents.
Physical therapist Dan Schall and his wife, Suzie Woolway, a certified and licensed speech-language pathologist who has spent most of her past 14 years working within the areas of early intervention, opened the Kauai Independent Rehabilitation Associates last week. They had their grand opening and open house Friday.
Schaal moved to ‘Ele‘ele in 2001 to open and manage a new clinic for HealthSouth, the largest provider of rehabilitation services in the United States.
His reason for going out on his own?
“I wanted to be able to provide more of a community-based, physical-therapy clinic, with fewer strings attached,” he said.
Schall said there were a number of factors that went into getting the business started. In addition to all of his personal-licensing requirements and securing liability insurance, he also had to establish himself as an insurance provider.
Then, there was the “regular business stuff,” which also included expanding the building they are located in, which is on land owned by Alexander & Baldwin Properties Inc. very near the site of the A&B condominium development planned in that area.
Schall said that practicing in a rural environment means being ready for every kind of patient.
“It’s hard to be an expert. Being it is a rural-healthcare setting, we get a lot of back-pain cases, some stroke (patients) and sports injuries. We’re even rehabilitating kids with their sports injuries,” he said. “The range and variety is enormous.”
KIRA’s main “competitors” are HealthSouth and Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital at the West Kauai Medical Center in Waimea, he said.
“It’s not a fierce competition. There’s such a great need. There’s a lot of business (out there), but not enough therapists,” he said.
He said the key to keeping up with the needs of a diverse client list is to keep up with continuing education and training.
For now, Schall said KIRA has three employees, himself, an office manager, and his wife. Within a year he hopes to have an additional physical therapist and an occupational therapist.
Like many healthcare practitioners on Kaua‘i, Schall conceded the relatively low reimbursement rate from Hawai‘i’s primary insurers is an issue.
“You have to be very efficient, and pay attention. There is no room for error,” he said.
Schall said he is looking for new patients through physician referrals rather than trying to court clients from his former facility. But he said he will not turn away former patients.
Schaal graduated from the University of New Mexico in 1998, with a degree in physical therapy. He began his career working in a private clinic in northern New Mexico that focused on outpatient rehabilitation and sports medicine. During those three years, he became certified in the Work Steps method of workers’-compensation injury prevention and management.
In addition, he received training in manual-therapy techniques, sports rehabilitation, and Functional Capacity Testing.
While managing the ‘Ele‘ele clinic, he continued to work toward his manual-therapy certification, amassing over 180 hours of continuing education in seven years.
Prior to becoming a physical therapist, Schall earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education from the University of New Mexico.
The couple spent the next five years, from 1996 until their move to Kaua‘i in 2001, living in rural northern New Mexico. During that period of time, Woolway said she provided speech- and language-support services to the Taos (New Mexico) County American Red Cross.
In addition, she was part of a transdisciplinary team with the University of New Mexico, traveling throughout the state evaluating “hard-to-test” kids.
She said her immediate goals for KIRA are to streamline billing procedures as well as continue to provide home-based, speech- and language-therapy services to families and their young children.
Woolway graduated from Humboldt State University in June 1991, and spent her first five years, after graduating, working with deaf and hard-of-hearing infants and young children at Presbyterian Ear Institute, a premier cochlear-implant center of the Southwest.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site, employment in the occupation (physical therapy) is projected to increase much faster than the national average for other positions, reflecting the growing number of individuals with disabilities or limited function, and the increasing use of physical-therapist assistants to reduce the cost of therapeutic services.
Physical-therapist assistants generally have an associate’s degree, but physical-therapist aides usually learn skills on the job.
Almost 75 percent of all jobs were in hospitals or offices of physical therapists.
