Paul Szmal: And welcome back to FLX Morning, it's 8.38 on Finger Lakes News Radio. And it's time for our Health Matters segment with our friends from UR Medicine and Finger Lakes Health. And first off, we'll bring Caroline Scott in to introduce this morning's guests. Caroline, good morning.
Caroline Scott: Good morning. How are you? Doing great. How about yourself? Doing quite well on this sunny day. Thank you. Yeah. So who do we have in studio with us this morning?
Maureen Loyal, Laurie Bush: Good morning. We have with us Maureen Loyal, who's Director of Rehabilitation Services for Finger Lakes Health. And we have Lori Bush, who is the Practice Manager for Interlakes Orthopedic Surgery in Clifton Springs and Geneva.
Paul Szmal: Okay. And they're going to give us some updates. All right. Beautiful. Well, Maureen, we'll start with you. How about a little bit about your background, how you came to be in this position?
Maureen Loyal: I'm the Director of PT, but I'm a physical therapist by profession. So I was working down on Long Island for years and I played basketball at William Smith years ago and saw the position open up and told my husband I could do what I did down there, up there, in an area that I love. So I came up.
Paul Szmal: Wonderful. Wonderful. And Lori, how about you? How did you wind up where you are today?
Laurie Bush: Actually, great question. So I started in healthcare at the U of R quite a few years ago. Started in orthopedics actually in the 80s. Moved on to some different practice manager positions. I was in Florida with Florida Cancer Specialists, came back to the Finger Lakes area, and ended up here in Geneva.
Paul Szmal: On the materials that I got before the interview, it says one of the things we wanted to talk about here is the Comprehensive Total Joint Replacement Program. And I said to you, Maureen, before we came on the air, I'm like, that sounds really complicated. But it's not really as complicated as it sounds.
Maureen Loyal: No. Comprehensive just means that it's multidisciplinary, that we have a lot of folks working together to make sure that your experience is terrific and that we get you back moving after your joint replacement. So we have nursing, our physicians, our therapists all work as a team from before surgery and our preoperative education classes, and our nutritionists as well, all the way through your surgery, which you're in the hospital overnight now, and then starting your therapy the day after. And then just that we follow you all the way till you're back independent and back to your activities.
Paul Szmal: You know, I can remember a time when joint replacement was considered to be something really kind of out there on the peripheral. It's become far more commonplace nowadays. It's super advanced now, where, like I said, you're only in the hospital overnight, where years ago you used to stay in the hospital five days, then go to a rehab facility. So now the technique is so good by our physicians that you can go home the next day and your mobility is back faster, and we have a lot more weekend warriors who are having their joint replaced at a younger age so that they can live a higher and better lifestyle going into their future.
Laurie Bush: Well, what are some of the more common joint replacements that take place?
Maureen Loyal: Mostly knee and hip. And we have in our practice at IOS, Dr. Neumeier, who does the anterior approach for the hip replacement, which doesn't really even need therapy after surgery. They kind of are walking around by themselves right the next day, and they go home, and their exercise is just really to start walking. And then the knees, the main thing is to get them bending, right? So you definitely need therapy after those as soon as possible to get them fully straight and also bending so that they're functional.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, I've had my mom that's gone through and had both hips replaced on each side. So a little familiar with the process, but it's changed a lot even since she's had it done a few years ago because there's all new sorts of technology innovations and therapy innovations that are happening all the time. And even the scarring, because now, you know, they used to use staples and stitches, and now they use a glue. And so the incision line is almost gone, you know, after a few months that you didn't even know that you had it.
We're talking with our friends from UR Medicine Finger Lakes Health here this morning on FLX Morning. So let's talk a little bit more about your role as the practice manager for Interlakes Orthopedic Surgery.
Laurie Bush: Wonderful. So Interlakes Orthopedics, we currently have five orthopedic surgeons along with four physician assistants. So we have a pretty full staff of providers. My role, obviously, is overseeing daily operations, making sure we're fully staffed. We do have two surgical schedulers who do a phenomenal job getting patients in pretty quickly for surgery. So a full complement of staff that we oversee every day.
Paul Szmal: How many people do you think in a year, could you answer to guess, that you wind up treating?
Laurie Bush: We have, well, our visits, we see about 26,000 visits in a year.
Paul Szmal: Wow. That's a lot. I'm not sure surgery-wise, too. Don't have a full gamut on the number of surgeries.
Laurie Bush: For joint replacement, it's over 200 a year. And then you have your rotated cuff repairs, you have our spine surgeries, so the number goes up astronomically. And we do a lot of upper extremity surgeries, like carpal tunnel surgeries, back and forth.
Paul Szmal: Now that's one I know has really come a long way and become more and more prevalent over the past few years is people diagnosed with carpal tunnel and having the surgery done for that.
Let's talk about osteoporosis for a second here, because I know one of the features of UR Medicine Fingerlace Health is the osteoporosis clinic. This is a problem that a lot of women have to deal with, and even men have to deal with as well, as they get advanced in age.
Maureen Loyal: Absolutely. So Dr. Wang oversees our osteoporosis clinic. They call it the silent disease, I believe. And it mostly affects older women, for sure. So you start out with seeing your primary care doctor, who orders a DEXA scan, which is typically how it's diagnosed, and then they're referred to us for follow-up care. There's a lot of innovation with osteoporosis, from taking an oral medication to an injection, and also an infusion. So it just depends on the severity of your osteoporosis. It's a great program. Dr. Wang is phenomenal. She's been doing it for years, and we're constantly taking new patients.
Paul Szmal: And there's a danger to osteoporosis in the long term if it's untreated.
Maureen Loyal: Yes, there's a high risk for fracture if you fall or have any kind of event. You can just have a pathological fracture, no fall, because the bone's so weak and can fracture. It's 18 to 26 years of age is when you really have to have that calcium intake to help you prevent osteoporosis in the future. So if we didn't have that, that's why it's a silent disease. You catch it later in life. And we work closely with our rehab department, with the osteoporosis clinic, to take newly diagnosed folks who are at a high risk for falls and give them some balance exercises, really teach them about the disease process so that they have successful outcomes and don't have that risk for falls.
Paul Szmal: Is there any kind of physical therapy involved with osteoporosis if you're being treated for it?
Maureen Loyal: Yes, you can. Weight-bearing activities actually help build your bones, make them stronger. So like swimming in the pool won't really help osteoporosis, but walking, doing high-impact activity exercises, making sure that you're, you know, as we age, our balance becomes weaker because of multiple things. Our balance is vision, vestibular, and our somatosensory inside our joints, known where our joints are. All those start to get impaired as we get older. So rehab and physical therapy can help you have strategies to work around that or help make those better.
Paul Szmal: Now I understand there's a new rehab center in Clifton Springs as well that is a part of the UR Medicine Finger Lace Health family.
Maureen Loyal: In an effort to expand our services to our community, we, it hasn't opened yet, but it's coming soon.
Laurie Bush: Oh good. Hopefully by the summer, up in Clifton Springs, right next to the IOS office in Clifton Springs so that we can really have that flow between rehab and ortho to make sure those successful outcomes happen. And I'm sure this is going to be equipped with the latest and the greatest.
Maureen Loyal: Yes. And the best staff. We do use a lot of modalities. We have shockwave therapy and we have laser therapy, but mostly I pride our therapists on we actually put our hands on our patients so that we find where that mobility issue is or the muscle or bone issue is and really fix that so that they don't have to come back.
Paul Szmal: Did you actually say laser therapy?
Maureen Loyal: Yes.
Paul Szmal: Oh wow, I'm intrigued. What is that all about?
Maureen Loyal: Well, it's a laser. It's a laser that we can use for like tendonitis, fasciitis, any kind of inflammation. So similar to ultrasound, but it gets a little bit more of the deeper tissue and can help healing happen.
Paul Szmal: I'm glad you mentioned plantar fasciitis because that is not one of the things that I think people when they think osteoporosis or they're thinking joints, they're thinking hip replacements or knee replacements, but feet can be a problem as well.
Maureen Loyal: Huge problem. Yep. Or if you lose that motion in your feet or you have painful feet, you stop walking and that just snowballs into everything else, right? Your risk for falls go up. So our shockwave therapy machine really is really good at breaking up that plantar fasciitis and only a couple visits.
Paul Szmal: I didn't even know there was a treatment for that now. So that's fantastic. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.
Wonderful. I appreciate you all stopping in this morning. Thank you so much. If people want to make an appointment to see Lori first off, to see perhaps see Dr. Wong as you had mentioned, how do they go about doing that?
Laurie Bush: Yep. Our practice, Interlakes Orthopedic Surgery at 315-789-0993. We have a fantastic, phenomenal front office staff who'll take care of you. And if they want to make an appointment with Dr. Becker, I'll just list them out. Dr. Mark, Dr. Wong, Dr. Becker, Dr. Neumeier, and Dr. Okoto, feel free to call that number and we'll get you in same day.
Paul Szmal: And Maureen, if people wanted to reach out to find out more about rehabilitation services, how do they do that?
Maureen Loyal: They can look on the Finger Lakes website. You can go to our Finger Lakes Health website as well as call our offices. We have offices for outpatient in Waterloo, Geneva, and Penan. Our Geneva office is kind of the main hub. So if you wanted that, we can get you in the right area at 315-787-4570.
Paul Szmal: Wonderful. Ladies, thank you so much for stopping in this morning. Much appreciated.
Maureen Loyal, Laurie Bush: Thank you. All right. Thank you.
