Gaylord Specialty Healthcare Receives Grant from MJ Petretto Foundation following Annual Golf Classic

On October 27, the MJ Petretto Foundation presented Gaylord Specialty Healthcare with a check for $9,000 as proceeds from their 2014 Annual Golf Classic held at the Clinton Country Club on June 9. The grant will be used to purchase the Reach system for the hospital’s spinal cord injury unit.

Reach is an environmental control unit which allows a patient who has limited mobility due to paralysis to control their environment through speech or a touch screen. Patients can command the lights to turn on or a TV to be turned off. The Reach is one system that also integrates with hospital beds allowing the patient to also lift or lower the bed with their voice.

Environmental control units can give a patient a sense of control and help return a level of independence that they lost after a traumatic accident or illness. Staff will have the chance to work with both patients and families to learn and master Reach while in the hospital so that when they go home and install the system they can immediately be successful and independent.

Pictured from left to right:

Front Row: Ann Dwyer, RN, Gaylord, Anne Walczak, PT, Gaylord, Meghan Chiaraluce, OT, Gaylord Jesse Tramontano

Back Row: Scott Vertucci ,Board member MJ Petretto Foundation, George Kyriacou, President & CEO Gaylord Hospital, MJ Petretto, Chair of MJ Petretto Foundation, Bob Wade, Board member, MJ Petretto Foundation