A new partnership between Signature Healthcare and five area high schools will assist athletic trainers, coaches and school nurses to provide seamless Orthopedic Care, Medical Care, Physical Therapy and Brain Injury Treatment and Prevention to all students.
Schools will receive access to free Impact Testing by a certified impact consultant, clinically managed pre-season conditioning, and 24/7 access to emergency medical care, radiology services, physical therapy / rehab services, orthopedic surgeons, and a SportSmart Medical Director. Also offered will be free educational forums for CEU credits for Athletic Directors and Athletic Trainers, presented by Ken Lawson, MD, Chief of the Emergency Department at Signature Healthcare and SportSmart Program Director, in addition to other experts. Forum topics will include: Preseason Nutrition and Hydration; Traumatic Brain Injury; Sudden Cardiac Arrest, and others. Many of these forums will also be open to parents and teachers. Bill Buckner, former MLB first baseman and manager of the Brockton Rox, supports the program and is the spokesperson.
Participating schools include: Whitman-Hanson High School, Stoughton High, East Bridgewater High, Cardinal Spellman and Brockton High.
ImPact is a program used at all levels to create baselines for athletes, so when they experience a concussion, there is a way to measure against their normal reaction time. You cannot “grade” a concussion, the same hit to the head affects different people in different ways. Every single athlete at a professional level does the ImPact test as a baseline. The test shows us a combination of memory, spatial recognition, color recognition, word recognition, reaction time and irritability.
Under the SportSmart umbrella, Signature Healthcare will also provide Saturday clinic hours to treat student athletes at the hospital, staffed by our orthopedic surgeons.
For more information, please visit www.MySignatureCare.org/Concussion.
About Signature Healthcare
Signature Healthcare includes Brockton Hospital as well as Signature Medical Group - 150 physicians and other direct care providers - and a total of 2,500 employees operating from locations in Abington, Bridgewater, Brockton, Randolph, Raynham, Stoughton and West Bridgewater, Massachusetts. In 2008 and 2010, Signature Healthcare Brockton Hospital received the Premier Award for Quality, ranking it in the top 1% of all acute care hospitals in the country.
