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June 2005

By Morgan Tharp

Murer Consultants Celebrates 20 Years
In February 1985, Cherilyn Murer, JD, CRA, founded a consulting firm to address the burgeoning issues facing health care—Murer Consultants.

Twenty years later, the philosophy upon which the firm was founded remains true-health care is a complex matrix of medical, social, economic, legal, and government issues demanding sound and pragmatic problem-solving with realistic expectations executed within given time frames.

Over the years, the company has grown in scope and dimension, serving more than 600 client engagements in more than 40 states, Europe, and Canada.

"What's next for our company is that we will continue to grow in the complexity of the topics and issues that we deal with on behalf of our clients," Murer says.

A significant milestone in company growth was the addition of two partners: Michael A. Murer, executive vice president, general counsel; and Lyndean Lenhoff Brick, senior vice president.

Cherilyn Murer

This triad of strengths and expertise serves as the leadership for the firm's 25 staff members.

A unique dimension of Murer Consultants is the writing of articles and e-learning material, and the publication of five books over a 6-year period from 1997 to 2003. Books published in partnership with McGraw-Hill and Commerce Clearing House include: The Case Management Sourcebook; Compliance Audits and Plans for Healthcare; Post Acute Reimbursement Manual-A Financial and Legal Guide; Medical Records Management; and Understanding Provider-Based Status.

"A very important part of Murer Consultants' work is the relationship that it has had with Rehab Management for the past 11 years," says Cherilyn Murer, who is a regular contributor and member of the magazine's editorial advisory board. "That relationship began when [then publisher] Curtis Pickelle called me and asked me to do an article. And that one article has turned into multiple articles, which appear on a diverse number of topics. This gives us a national forum for discussion of the most timely issues related to health care."

Today, the firm specializes in regulatory compliance; specialty hospital development and management oversight, including long-term acute care, rehabilitation, and surgical hospitals; and strategic planning and operational positioning for both inpatient and outpatient health care facilities.

"We have continued to grow and diversify in terms of not only feasibility in development of facilities and post-acute venues, but we have moved to operational management of those facilities as well," Murer says. "We continue to see that as a growth opportunity for us."

Education and training have always been a cornerstone of the firm. Murer Consultants has advocated that enhanced expertise and outcome accountability are the means to effective growth and quality of service.

Innovation and the ability to navigate ever-changing obstacles are the hallmark of the company. Murer Consultants salutes its clients and is appreciative of the opportunity it has had over the past 20 years to influence change and impact the provision of health care services.

Anodyne Offers CME Web Cast
Anodyne Therapy, LLC, Tampa, Fla, is sponsoring a CME Web cast Monochromatic Infrared Photo Energy-Clinical Outcomes in the Treatment of Diabetic Neuropathy on July 12 at 8 pm EST, July 13 at 1 pm EST, and July 14 at 7 pm EST.

The course includes an overview of neuropathy, an explanation of MIRE and its mechanism of action, and a review of clinical protocols, studies, and cases using MIRE on peripheral neuropathy.

Faculty participating in the Web cast include Neil Goldberg, MD, associate professor at UCLA; Shayne Ferguson, PT, MHS, PhD, GCS, CWS, director of rehab at Lumina of Kentucky; and James McGuire, DPM, PT, CWS, CPed, chair and associate professor at the Temple University School of Podiatric Medicine.

The North American Center for Continuing Medical Education, Malvern, Pa, is offering 1 hour of CME for physicians, and 1 hour of CE for nurses and physical therapists. To register, visit www.naccme.com/naccme/webcasts/139_index.cfm.

McGovern Physical Therapy Marks 5th Year
Looking back over the past 5 years, the staff at McGovern Physical Therapy Associates, Revere, Mass, have much to be proud of. The outpatient physical therapy provider opened its first clinic in March 2000. It added another two clinics in Massachusetts, with the three clinics currently serving more than 3,500 patients. The third clinic, opened in February 2005, is the first McGovern facility to offer its patients aquatic physical therapy.

Patients to Give Opinion on Surgery Effectiveness
In a new approach to determine the success of rehabilitation therapy, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences have begun asking post-orthopedic surgery patients to give their opinion of how effective and beneficial their surgery and rehabilitation have been for them.

The program, clinical outcomes research, allows patients to tell doctors the effectiveness of the surgery and rehabilitation in changing their level of pain, and whether their quality of life improved in regard to participating in daily activities.

To help support the clinical outcomes research, Biomet Inc, Warsaw, Ind, awarded an educational grant to the university. The grant will help support the education of orthopedic surgery residents and fellows at the university, provide equipment and personnel to help collect research information, and facilitate patient participation in the studies.

Using an Internet-friendly data collection method, patients will be able to report the outcome of their procedure during a clinical visit or from their home.

Soccer Players Prone to More Injuries
According to a study published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, British researchers found that young soccer players are more likely to have injuries than athletes in other sports. They took a longitudinal study of athletes and followed their injury rate in the following sports: soccer, gymnastics, swimming, and tennis. The first survey, the Training of Young Athletes Study (TOYA) was taken from 1987 to 1992 and looked at athletes ages 8 to 16 years old. A follow-up study was done in 2000, with 203 of the original 453 subjects responding.

The authors found that 63.6% of soccer players who participated in the sport over a long period of time had more sports injuries compared to just 51.9% of gymnasts, 50% of tennis players, and 28% of swimmers. They also discovered that performance stress was significantly related to the rate of injury. This they related to the intensity or duration of the training period.

The researchers concluded that young athletes who continue to train in their sport are at a greater risk of musculoskeletal injury than athletes who stopped training, and that those injuries could interfere in a future career in those sports.

New Rehab Center for Wounded Soldiers Slated
A new, state-of-the-art Military Amputee Training Center (MATC) is being built at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC, with plans to be open by December 2005.

MATC will provide advanced rehabilitative therapy for soldiers wounded while fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The goal of the MATC, a 29,000-square-foot addition to the main hospital building, is to return patients as closely as possible to their preinjury abilities. The center is expected to support 300 patient appointments per week.

The addition will take advantage of a sloped site to create a landscaped rooftop plaza that will provide a healing garden as well as a multi-surface training area for lower limb amputees to learn how to negotiate through grass, gravel, sand, dirt, and mud.

The facility will also provide areas for socializing so that patients may give one another psychological and emotional support.

Artificial Muscles Could Be Boon to Rehab
With one unique challenge made 6 years ago, the field of artificial muscle research is flexing its way to practical application. The proposition Yoseph Bar-Cohen, PhD, made was simple: build a robotic arm using artificial muscles that could arm wrestle a human. However, Bar-Cohen, a senior research scientist and acting group supervisor, advanced technologies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif, did not think his challenge would be answered so soon. "Given the technology we had in 1999, I thought it would take at least 20 years before we could do it," he says. He was wrong.

The highly anticipated arm-wrestling contest was held during the recent Electroactive Polymer and Devices Conference in San Diego. The competitors included three artificial arm teams from around the world; researchers from New Mexico and Switzerland built arms made of plastics and polymers, while a group of students from Virginia Tech University made their artificial arm out of gel fibers and electrochemical cells. Their competition: a local high school senior determined to give the researchers, as well as their artificial arms, a run for their money. "I'm really excited to be the human opponent," senior Panna Felsen said before the event. "But I have no plans of making it easy for the arms to win against me."

Felsen held true to her promise. She ended up beating all three artificial arms. Yet the research that went into this highlighted event did not go in vain. Improvements are already being made to the technology in an effort to accomplish the researchers' ultimate goal of winning against the strongest human on Earth.

Bar-Cohen's research is based on simple, lightweight strips of highly flexible plastic known as electroactive polymers (EAPs) that bend when electrical voltage is applied to it. When stimulated by electrochemical nerve impulses, biological muscle tissue contracts, resulting in movement. This same principle, consequently, can be applied to artificial muscles. New discoveries in EAP research would lead to more complex, more efficient robots, opening doors for many engineering technologies in medicine, military defense, and entertainment.

More important, however, research in the artificial muscle field could allow paralyzed humans to regain their mobility. Bar-Cohen foresees a day when EAPs will replace nonfunctional organic muscles in a paralyzed individual, and when prosthetics will be "connected to the brain and operate very much like a real arm or leg." The result, as Bar-Cohen states, would be a partially "bionic" person. "My hope is someday to see a handicapped person jogging to the grocery store using this technology," he says. —Nicolle Harrity

CRPF Names New Head of Science Advisory Council
The Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation (CRPF), Springfield, NJ, has named Moses Chao, PhD, to a 3-year term as the head of its Science Advisory Council (SAC).

Chao, a professor of cell biology, physiology, and neuroscience, and program coordinator in molecular neurobiology at the Skirball Institute of New York University School of Medicine, New York, has been a SAC member for 14 years.

CRPF's board of directors have also elected two additional members to SAC: Alex Kolodkin, PhD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore; and Wolfram Tetzlaff, MD, PhD, Man in Motion Chair in Spinal Cord Research, University of British Columbia, and associate director of Discovery Science for ICORD, Vancouver.

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