Summit Pacific Wellness Center is a medical and rehabilitation facility in Grays Harbor offering a wealth of resources to referred patients and the community. Nancy Jordan, the therapy services manager, highlights the recently expanded programs that help make Summit Pacific a leader in comprehensive therapeutic resources in our community
For the patient population, the focus is on therapies designed to ease and encourage transition back into mainstream living. Maximum independence is always the goal. It starts at the beginning, right when a new patient is received by Summit Pacific. “We do an evaluation, we set up a plan of care, we establish some goals together with them,” Jordan explains, “because, if we set up goals that they don’t want to achieve, they’re not going to achieve them.”
Further underscoring its holistic approach, The Summit Pacific Wellness Center also offers full rehabilitation facilities. Some of the areas addressed include:
Speech Therapies. This is a broad blanket that includes the cognitive aspects of speech skills, swallowing (for post-stroke treatment, etc.), working with children who are nonverbal, as well as treatment of stuttering and other speech-related issues. It is essentially the entire gamut of speech-related treatments and therapies.
Gross Motor Skills. Walking, reaching, post-surgical recovery, etc. These skill sets are foundational to one’s ability to live life on one’s own. Summit Pacific works with each patient to help them gain back their independence after a major medical issue such as a stroke, heart attack or major injury.
Occupational Therapies. This area focuses on things one needs to do every day for themselves. For example, the focus might be on enhancing daily living skills, such as bathing, dressing and other tasks one must perform to live independently. The goal is independence.
The Best Resource for Pediatric Therapies in the Area
Summit Pacific is the only facility in the Elma area providing physical, occupational and speech therapies for children. According to Nancy Jordan, this is an underserved patient category. The nearest facilities available that offer similar services are in Aberdeen and Olympia, roughly 30-minute drives. While this distance may not seem overly burdensome, it could easily become so when a child with special needs is a part of the equation.
Although the categories of therapies for children are like those for adults, their implementation differs. For children, the approach, especially for occupational therapies, is more play and fun oriented. Given the ages being accommodated, developmental issues are often more prevalent than they would be in the adult population.
Some areas that might receive focus are fine motor skills, such as writing, manipulating small objects, etc. These skills are considered developmental milestones, Jordan shares. A deficit, or even what might appear to be the beginning of a problem in one or more of these areas, would likely be identified by the family pediatrician. That, in turn, could result in a child receiving a referral to a specialized facility, such as Summit Pacific.
Depending on the level of need, the approach might be to try to get the child back on track with developmental norms. Other needs that can be addressed might result from compromised sensory faculties, such as with autism, or physical issues, such as those caused by cerebral palsy.
Summit Pacific is equipped to handle the full spectrum of childhood developmental needs, from the cognitive to the purely physical, and everything in between.
The Summit Pacific Wellness Center is located at 610 East Main Street, Elma. Find out more about their programs by visiting the Summit Pacific Wellness Center website or by calling 360-346-2298.
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