It's not uncommon to walk into Encompass HealthCare and see employee Julia rubbing a patient's foot, making him a freshly homemade grilled cheese, or asking about how his son's football game went last night. That's because Encompass Healthcare, West Bloomfield and Oakland County's one of a kind outpatient wound healing treatment center, aspired to be different--beginning with design and ending with service.
Encompass HealthCare was built out specifically for paraplegics and quadriplegics or anyone else who is disabled, although their patient population includes ambulatory people with nonhealing wounds as well. Five foot wide hallways accommodate 2 disabled patients passing side by side, four foot coat hooks allow them to hang up their coats easily, the roll-in shower allows them dignity in times of need and unforseen accidents, and the hospital-like equipment such as the lift or the hyperbaric oxygen chambers let them know that this wound healing center is unique. Finding everything "wound healing" in an outpatient center without going to a hospital? Now that's different!
Even the service is set apart from anything these patients have ever known. Julia brings snacks, the employees sit and chat with the IV patients while they get their infusions, and the office is open 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The employees say, "That's because wounds and infections don't know what day of the week it is!"
