“Special Tree Rehabilitation System is one of the nation’s leading neurorehabilitation providers for post-and subacute care and recovery from brain injury, spinal cord injury, and multiple trauma.” Special Tree Neuro Care Center has been a leader in treating brain injury since 1974. Special Tree provides a unique and comprehensive center for the treatment and rehabilitation of brain injury, spinal cord injury, and multiple trauma clients in a variety of settings including skilled nursing inpatient rehabilitation, residential rehabilitation, and outpatient rehabilitation. Special Tree is proud to be the only skilled nursing home in the world to be CARF accreditation in both brain injury and spinal cord injury.

Special Tree offers a full array of services including an interdisciplinary team that consists of:

• Respiratory Therapy
• Skilled Nursing
• Physical Therapy
• Occupational Therapy
• Speech and Language Pathology
• Therapeutic Recreation
• Massage Therapy
• Social Work
• Psychology and Behavioral Therapy
• Psychiatry
• Nutrition Services
• Attending Physician Services
• Internal Case Management

Our Respiratory Therapists are uniquely trained to treat conditions of the cardiopulmonary system—they evaluate and manage the respiratory needs of clients who have impaired lung function and related needs. On site at the NeuroCare Center 24 hours per day, Special Tree Respiratory Therapists work aggressively to help clients regain their freedom by reducing or eliminating their dependence on mechanical ventilation and artificial airways, weaning clients from ventilators and tracheotomies whenever possible. They also serve as consultants to clients and staff at our residential locations.

In managing the respiratory component of a client’s care, a Respiratory Therapist may perform tasks such as operating and maintaining equipment to administer oxygen or assist with breathing (often through a “vent” or “ventilator”), managing therapy that will help a client recover lung function, administering medications to help alleviate breathing problems and prevent respiratory infections, monitoring a client’s levels of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and other gases, or maintaining a client’s artificial airway, commonly called a “trach” or “tracheotomy.” Certified by the National Board for Respiratory Care, they are either Certified Respiratory Therapists (CRTs) or Registered Respiratory Therapists (RRTs).

At Special Tree, our respiratory team is an amazing bunch. Not only do they treat the ‘clinical’ needs of clients, but they participate in their overall rehabilitation goals, too, by helping them participate in individual and group activities and community outings. Special Tree clients are encouraged to get into the community and are not held back because of their respiratory needs.

Some Strategies and principles employed by Special Tree that have set the bar high?

Special Tree is proud to be a two-time Michigan Performance Excellence (MIPEx) Award winner. MIPEx is the state level version of the national Malcolm Baldrige Award. The award is the highest level of state recognition for performance excellence that an organization can receive. The award focuses on performance in five key areas: 1. Product and process outcomes 2. Customer Outcomes 3. Workforce Outcomes 4. Leadership and governance outcomes 5. Financial and market outcomes

In all areas of care Special Tree has developed processes, monitoring, and feedback to improve outcomes. Respiratory care has developed many new processes, feedback loop, and monitoring of clinical and customer outcomes to provide a level of care that exceeds benchmarks in the area of subacute rehabilitation. This includes continuous quality improvement in the areas of education, best practices, identifying new equipment and technology, and reporting. “if we are not improving we are falling behind”. Our respiratory therapy team has extended training and education in the area of brain injury and respiratory care and our ultimate measure is the very low decannulation rate of 6 days along with a Net Promoter Score of 20 points higher than the national benchmark.

We simply have the best respiratory therapy team that has phenomenal clinical outcomes along with the highest customer satisfaction scores.