What We Provide
Northern Michigan Regional Hospital Rehabilitation Services department is dedicated to improving quality of life for all individuals with communication disorders. This is achieved by providing an evaluation, diagnosis, education, and treatment to all ages, infants through adults, with speech, language, and voice disorders.
Who Can Benefit From Speech Therapy
A communication disorder occurs when a person is not able to easily and effectively convey a message or be part of a conversation. This may happen because of impairment in the person's speech, language, voice, fluency, cognition or an unsuccessful attempt to use any of these areas in context (pragmatics). A person may be able to communicate without speech by using other methods of communication such as electronic devices, sign language, or gestures. Diagnosis types include stroke (CVA), traumatic brain injury, brain tumors, neurological diseases, post-neurological surgery, muscle diseases, and craniofacial surgeries.
Treatment Strategies
Following an initial evaluation, the speech-language pathologist and patient (plus family members if appropriate) will develop a personalized treatment plan. Through focused therapy sessions, the speech-language pathologist will address the goals in the treatment plan in a variety of therapy activities. Some of the activities may include learning new coping strategies to eliminate or minimize speech, language and related problems. Therapy may also involve learning or relearning proper production of speech sounds to improve speech intelligibility, improving rate or fluency of speech, developing proper control of the vocal and respiratory systems for correct voice production, or focus on improving language skills like vocabulary, sentence structure, reading comprehension, or conversational skills.
Northern Michigan Regional Hospital Rehabilitation Services can be reached at 231.487.4200.