UC Health Drake Center

My aquatic and land physical therapy experience was excellent! The therapists and lifeguards were so helpful and caring. I highly recommend the Drake Hospital Spine and orthopedic center for any joint and pain issues you may have.

I was a little surprised at first to find out the appointments were only 30 minutes, but it all worked out. All the therapists gave me helpful exercises to work on my problem area. I worked with Jonathan the most, and he gave me copies of some great exercises to do at home and my shoulder was feeling much better when I completed my PT.

Drake hospital is cheerful. The employees are lovely, considerate people. The food is good. I got the beat night sleep in over a month. The therapy is excellent, they cover everything- things I need to do at home. They allow you get up and move, got to the bathroom. But they may go with you to make sure you’re okay. If I were to be sick again I would come here.

Overall the care has been excellent.
A bit of background:

My husband had a stroke fall of 2021. He had extraordinarily poor care in ICU at a Mercy facility. So poor that he nearly died multiple times without my intervention. He had surgery that was unnecessary that we are still trying to correct after 12 subsequent surgeries. After ICU, we ended up at an LTAC within a TriHealth facility. It was marginally better (not in bedside care, which was abominable, but that he could see his good physicians to correct a lot of the issues from Mercy). At that time, he was too medically complex and a danger to return to ICU for me to feel comfortable sending him to Drake Center. He had some complications that weren’t resolved enough for me to feel comfortable sending him to Drake.
After a couple of weeks and a few surgeries resolving some of the complications from stroke at Good Sam, we moved to chicago for him to be treated at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab (formerly rehabilitation institute of Chicago). We were there for 3 months. It is attached to Northwestern Memorial Hospital and directly across the street, so medical complications are swiftly taken to NMH. They also have a very intensive rehab, often more than the minimum of 3 hours per day.
5 months after stroke, he was medically stable enough and was able to stand and walk with a hemi Walker a max of 100 feet with the safety belt and therapist. He had regained some words. We were released and could go to Drake Center. Had he not had all of the medical complications after stroke, it’s my belief that he could have gone to Drake after the LTAC.
He was a resident at Drake inpatient for 7 weeks. During that time, he had PT, OT, and Speech therapies 5-6 days a week for about 2-2.5 hours for each therapy day. He steadily improved and was able to walk with a quad cane 200 or so feet and had regained hundreds of words when we left. The care here was very compassionate. He was never left in waste or neglect. The therapists, nurses, and aids really cared about him and his progress. They also made some concessions for our family that were so greatly appreciated.
After he was released from Drake 7 months after stroke, he came home to home care at first (2 months). Then we started Drake outpatient therapy - OT, PT, and speech 2 times per week. My husband slowly progressed and gained independence in many areas, like self care and cooking. The outpatient therapists also cared about him and his progress.
The only critique I could offer would be to give the patient the full 45 minute session regardless of start time (often he was retrieved by the therapist after his scheduled start time but still finished at the originally scheduled end time). While I understand that one therapy session running over could derail a whole day in this case, perhaps small buffer times are needed to combat this in order to give every patient the full therapy session.
While I can also express frustration that we were “graduated” from therapy too soon, that is a direct frustration to Anthem insurance company and not to Drake specifically. They did try to fight for my husband to keep his therapy.

While I did ask about the super low ratings you see from some years ago (pre UC I believe), I was assured that it was not as it had been written. However I did hold judgment until I saw for myself the care they gave my husband. The therapists and sessions were just as good as Shirley Ryan. The issue is just the facility itself. It’s very old feeling and it does come off as dated and, well, grungy. But I’ll tell you right now that my husband was in a gleaming new icu that proceeded to nearly unalive him repeatedly, so gleaming new and shining is great, but I’d rather have staff who are good at their jobs and LISTEN to the advocate.
I especially recommend outpatient speech therapists Sherry and Courtney and inpatient speech therapist Zach. Physical therapists inpatient - Stephanie I think (2 of them, maybe one was OT?) outpatient, Kathleen and Justin are wonderful. I appreciate each of them so much!