Currently, there is a 15-year-old boy in our unit from Idaho who sustained a severe brain injury. Wendy’s involvement with this child and family began months prior to his admission to PCH when he was an inpatient at a small hospital in Idaho that doesn’t offer inpatient rehab. Wendy worked closely with the care team in Idaho, nurse management and bed control at PCH, the patient’s family, Idaho Medicaid, and the PCH rehab team to determine when the ideal time would be to admit him to our rehab service. Wendy arranged for the transfer and has been helping support the family who has a very complex psycho-social situation. She started working proactively on the highly complex discharge disposition for this child from the moment he was admitted.

Wendy has gone above and beyond the typical expectations of her role, working with Idaho Medicaid to determine available resources for home modifications. The family is unable to complete the required forms to access the needed resources themselves, so Wendy filled out the disability application paperwork for them. Wendy has been collaborating with a long-term care facility in Idaho where this child will go until the home modifications are completed. In addition, she is determining and arranging for various equipment needs for when he finally transitions home. She is advocating for the mom to receive financial support and resources available through Idaho Medicaid so that she can care for her child herself.

Wendy works extra hours to coordinate this child’s care amongst multiple consulting teams, arranging for backup plans, and doing everything she can to make sure this child is safe and has the assistance he needs when he leaves. I have no doubt that even after this child is discharged Wendy will continue to have frequent contact with the family, follow-up facility, and providers for many months to ensure his safety and optimize his recovery. Wendy’s commitment to this child and his case has been critical in ensuring a positive and successful rehab experience.

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Wendy Walker humbly and quietly works behind the scenes to advocate for and assure each rehab patient has everything they need. Wendy is a rehab case manager and functions as our Rehab Program Manager. On any given day she provides evidence for insurance companies that justifies the need for inpatient rehabilitation. Wendy has multiple community resources that she collaborated with to ensure a patient has all of the equipment they need to be successful at home, even if it is not covered by insurance, she always figures it out. Because she does this with such apparent ease we often forget how much effort and devotion it takes.

Above and beyond this Wendy helped facilitate life-changing inpatient rehabilitation for one of our patients. Wendy and therapy identified that PCH was not going to be the best place for inpatient rehabilitation following a devastating C1-C2 spinal cord injury for an 11-year-old girl leaving her quadriplegic and ventilator dependent. Wendy coordinated with our adult rehab partners at the U of U to help provide this young lady exposure to technology that could help her regain control in small areas of her life. As a certified rehab nurse, Wendy recognized we didn’t have the resources that would help launch this patient into a life of possibility. Wendy worked with the medical and rehab teams to identify rehab programs specialized in high-level SCI. She advocated when the insurance company wanted to send her to a program closer to home that did not provide the opportunity for diaphragmatic/phrenic nerve pacing (allowing her to eventually have time off of the ventilator.) She researched the program and was able to help the insurance company understand why this patient had to go to Baltimore. It was her best chance.

Once the rehabilitation was approved the insurance would only be able to cover transport to the facility and not home back to Utah. Wendy didn’t stop, she kept advocating. She was able to work with Intermountain to help fund the patient’s return trip home. She worked tirelessly with multiple medical providers at both facilities, with the travel team, the nursing team, and insurance. The insurance agency was so impressed with Wendy’s work they reached out to the PCH administration to ensure she was recognized for her efforts. This is only one of countless examples of the work Wendy does every single day. She lives, ‘The child first and always’ when there is a problem we can’t figure out – we always go to Wendy. She deserves to be honored for her dedication, brilliance, and endless compassion. Countless patients and their families have everything they need because of Wendy.