Totally Kids Acute Rehabilitation Hospital Achieves Better Outcomes Through Good Hearted Leadership

Totally Kids Acute Rehabilitation Hospital in Loma Linda exceeds national goals for restoring the mobility of children who require specialized treatment and therapy. Totally Kids’ Chief Executive Officer, Doug Padgett, tells California CEO Magazine the key to the organization’s success is a synergistic environment which allows the staff to flourish and produce superior outcomes.

Children with severe injuries tend to achieve more therapy-related progress, go home and rejoin their communities sooner as a result of a unique and proven treatment program at Totally Kids Acute Rehabilitation Hospital in Loma Linda.

The 25-bed acute unit serves ages 3 to 21 with short-term needs (two to six weeks), providing aggressive in-patient physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and recreational therapy.

“These kids are coming from the hospital, but they’ve had an accident or surgery, and they’re needing aggressive, robust rehab on a regular basis.,” said Totally Kids Chief Executive Officer, Doug Padgett. “We’re grabbing that window of opportunity that’s critical right after their surgery or right after they stabilize, where it has been proven that regular, robust therapy will have a long-term outcome for the rest of their lives.”

The 24/7 staff helps the kids do what kids do best – play, said Padgett. The Totally Kids website explains guided play is proven to help successfully transition a severely injured child from hospital to home and communities. The staff uses guided play as part of scientific principles and individualized therapeutic plans to restore a child’s life.

“There’s nothing this side of San Diego and Los Angeles that serves these kids in this way,” Padgett said.

Data show Totally Kids patients achieve more therapy-related progress, in less time than patients at other rehabilitation facilities according to the Functional Independence Measure Instrument. FIM^® is a yardstick used to measure the progress a pediatric patient achieves at a facility. Totally kids uses the WeeFIM tool for pediatrics

The Uniform Data System for Medical Rehabilitation shows the average length-of-stay was nearly a week to two-weeks less at Totally Kids when compared to similar pediatric rehabilitation, and to all rehabilitation facilities across the country.

In an interview on California CEO’s Good Hearted Leadership program, the Totally Kids chief tells host Ray Anderson that the hospital’s team of professionals is the greatest in the world at serving injured children with all their hearts.

“We have loving caregivers that are certified nurses aides, LVNs, RNs, respiratory therapists, physical therapists, and a host of social workers and case managers that help support them,” said Padgett.

The synergy of the staff is cultivated from the top down. Most of the leadership has been with Totally Kids for 16 to 18 years, some over 20 years.

“Totally Kids is a compilation of all of these staff members’ ideas,” said Padgett. “They lead from the heart.”

They nurture each other, he said, to create an environment in which everyone can grow, flourish and achieve superior results.

“In a high-reliability organization (known as HRO), you’re training a lot, a lot of education. But you are giving authority to the people that are in their respective world, and not second-guessing them.”

Totally Kids also operates a 56-bed pediatric subacute wing, a 15-bed residential intermediate care facility for developmentally disabled and delayed children, and a pediatric medical day care program blended with pre-school on its six-acre campus.

Totally Kids Rehabilitation Hospital is owned by Mountain View Child Care, Inc. in Loma Linda. For more information, review the website at https://totallykids.com, or call (909) 796-6915.

Article by
KJ Thomas