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Our next chapter, together.

IOCH provides physical and occupational therapy for a broad range of conditions, with particular expertise in chronic and complex concerns—including situations where someone has not found meaningful improvement elsewhere.

We are adding medical services with Dr. Lewandoski, with an initial focus on rheumatology. Your story, function, quality of life, values, and goals guide how these services come together to support you.

Our goal is to build a team capable of supporting 3,500 people and growing beyond that as capacity allows. It reflects the need we see for rheumatology and coordinated care in Grand Rapids, particularly for people who rely on insurance, alongside opportunities to reach people across Michigan through virtual services.

Reaching that goal means building the right team, with appropriate training and resources. How quickly we accomplish it depends on funding and our ability to grow and sustain clinical operations.

We believe care cannot simply wait until every part of someone’s team is available. We are growing our rehabilitation and medical teams while developing opportunities for consultation, education, and support through technology.

Our goal is for the process of care to begin when someone connects with us: understanding their needs and identifying useful steps that can begin now. An appointment with a particular provider may still take time, but other support may be available in the meantime. The starting point will depend on the person’s needs.

Yes. Virtual services are already available through IOCH, and Dr. Lewandoski will also offer virtual and in-person medical care.

Virtual appointments help us reach people across Michigan, including those facing transportation barriers or difficulty leaving home. Our in-person medical and rehabilitation services will be available under the same roof. We work with you to determine which appointment format is appropriate for your needs.

Yes. Our focus is on the whole person, including your function, quality of life, values, and goals. Even when one painful area brings you in, other aspects of your health and life can help us understand what you need.

Together, we identify the most useful priorities for care, track progress, and adapt as your circumstances and goals change. Considering the whole picture does not mean every concern needs the same attention at every appointment.

The initial medical expansion focuses on chronic conditions that affect daily functioning. You should continue working with your primary care provider for preventive care, routine screening, and other primary care needs.

We aim to coordinate with your existing providers and help connect the overall picture of your care. Primary care within IOCH has been discussed as a longer-term possibility.

We want to understand how your existing treatments fit into your health, daily life, and goals. That includes communicating with other providers, sharing relevant information, and coordinating recommendations.

Receiving care at IOCH does not automatically transfer responsibility for another specialist’s prescriptions or treatment to our team. We work to make those responsibilities and next steps clear.

Yes. When testing or imaging is clinically appropriate, Dr. Lewandoski can help arrange it as part of your care.

Initially, IOCH will not provide in-house injections, infusions, laboratory testing, blood draws, or specimen collection. We are establishing connections with outside providers and facilities to coordinate those services. Bringing additional services in-house may be considered as funding, staffing, and operational capacity grow.

We currently have seven rehabilitation professionals and are adding medical services with Dr. Lewandoski.

Over the next year, our goal is to add one to three advanced practice providers, two to four rehabilitation professionals, and behavioral health services, all working within IOCH’s model and framework. Growth depends on funding, recruitment, training, and sustainable operations. Your care team will be tailored to your needs; not everyone needs every service.

It means the professionals involved in your care work from a shared understanding of your story, priorities, and goals. Each contributes their expertise while communicating across disciplines and coordinating decisions with you.

The aim is for your story to carry across your team, so you do not have to start over at every appointment or connect every piece yourself.

No. Your care team is customized to your needs.

Some people may receive medical care only, rehabilitation only, or a combination. As behavioral health services become available, some people may benefit from those services alone or alongside other care. Having a broader team gives us more options; it does not mean everyone needs every discipline.

Our providers meet weekly and communicate between meetings as needs arise. These conversations help us share observations, coordinate recommendations, and work toward the goals that matter to you.

We are also discussing coordinated appointments where more than one provider could participate in your visit, allowing you and the relevant clinicians to discuss care together. Specific arrangements are still being developed.

In this discussion, we mean nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Our expansion plans include adding providers who can work with Dr. Lewandoski and the broader team to care for people with complex, chronic conditions.

Dr. Lewandoski is developing training to support a shared approach across the medical team.

It may. We are building services within IOCH while maintaining relationships with community providers whose expertise may be important to your care.

The goal is to involve the people who can meaningfully help you. Some may work within IOCH, and others may be part of your existing care team or community support network.

Coordination includes sharing appropriate clinical documents, contacting providers, and speaking directly when needed. Our electronic medical record helps us organize information and communicate your needs clearly.

We are also developing technology to make information exchange easier. Automatic connections across outside systems remain a work in progress, so direct communication continues to be important.

We work to accept nearly all insurance plans, with only a small number of exceptions. Please contact our team to confirm your specific plan and the service you need, particularly as new medical services become available.

If we do not accept your insurance, or your coverage leaves care difficult to afford, we can discuss other options.

Our team works to understand your benefits and explain how coverage applies to recommended care, including different services, multiple areas of concern, and the providers involved.

When authorization is required, we work through that process and advocate for your needs. We also work to ensure your medical record explains the complexity of your situation and why particular services are recommended. We want to be transparent about coverage questions and potential costs.

Please talk with our team about the barriers you are facing. We offer no-interest payment plans and financial hardship options and can discuss how those may apply to your situation.

We want to help you understand your options and find a workable path to care. We can also explore connections to community resources when appropriate.

We start by understanding the specific barrier. Depending on the situation, we may communicate with your insurer, seek authorization, provide additional clinical information, or discuss payment and hardship options.

We cannot guarantee an insurer’s decision, but we want you to have a team helping explain your needs and navigate the process.

We needed a record that could preserve the depth of someone’s story while meeting the practical demands of healthcare documentation. We were not finding the flexibility we needed in available systems, so we built our own.

Our record communicates clinical needs in language appropriate for providers and insurance companies while preserving the broader information that helps us understand the person. We are also developing patient-friendly explanations of care plans and action steps.

The foundations are already built, including our electronic medical record, which is being used in the rehabilitation clinic. We are expanding it to support medical services and developing tools that connect information across providers and between appointments.

The next stage includes broader access, integrations, refinement, training, and user support. Building the foundation is a substantial step, but maintaining it and making it useful to more people requires continued funding, time, and expertise.

Yes. You can request your medical records, including printed copies to keep or share with another provider.

We are also working to make care plans and action steps easier to understand and share with caregivers and other support people. Clinical documentation will retain the detail healthcare professionals need, while patient-facing information uses less jargon. Let our team know what you need and whom you want involved.

No. Technology helps organize information, follow changes, and identify patterns worth discussing.

Your clinician considers how relevant that information is to your situation. Decisions about care come from a conversation between you and your clinician, informed by your goals, experience, and the available information. The technology supports that relationship.

The goal is to tailor tracking to what is useful for you and your care. Some information may be helpful to record frequently; other information may only need an update when something changes.

We are developing the reminder and update processes. As tools become available, we will explain who reviews information and what response expectations apply. Recording information should not be assumed to mean someone is continuously monitoring it.

The aim is to capture information relevant to your life, goals, and care. That may include symptoms, daily functioning, sleep, energy, mood, stress, activities, and changes in your circumstances.

Updates from outside medical care and the social context of your life may also be important. Your clinician will work with you to decide what is useful to follow.

Our goal is to integrate as many useful sources as we can, including patient-reported information, questionnaires, phones, and wearable technologies. Volunteers are helping us explore and develop those connections.

We do not yet have a complete list of integrations or release dates. As connections become available, the clinician and patient will still decide whether the information is relevant and how it should inform care.

You and your clinician identify what matters most now. The technology helps organize relationships, follow changes over time, and preserve information that may become relevant later.

That allows us to focus on manageable priorities without losing the broader story. A pattern in the data is something to explore together; it does not automatically determine a treatment decision.

That is part of the intended design. We want people to have useful tools for following their experiences, understanding their plans, and supporting daily life outside appointments.

We are developing how continued access and communication will work. The level of clinical involvement, review of updates, and response expectations will need to be clear for each service.

We have explored early prototypes involving ECG-related measurements and movement sensors, alongside opportunities to work with existing devices.

This remains development work, and we have not announced general availability. As with our other technology, the purpose is to provide useful information that a clinician and patient can interpret together.

Yes. That is a central reason we built our own electronic medical record.

We need to communicate clearly with insurance companies about care and why it is needed. We also need to preserve information about someone’s life that may not fit reimbursement language or categories.

Those are two parts of the same record. Our system supports required clinical documentation alongside a richer understanding of the person and their experiences over time.

We have seen examples in our work at IOCH where better coordination and understanding of someone’s needs have helped reduce reliance on emergency department visits and the need for additional specialty care.

Our goal is to identify the right people and services for each care plan and avoid unnecessary duplication. These experiences guide our work, while our research will help us measure outcomes more systematically and understand when, how, and for whom the approach is most useful.

Our research has an immediate purpose in individual care and a broader purpose in improving healthcare.

We already use individual information and analysis in day-to-day care to better understand what may be appropriate for the person in front of us. The clinician and patient interpret that information together.

We also want to share methods, education, and tools that other clinicians and healthcare organizations can use. Our goal is to make care more contextual beyond IOCH while continuing to learn from individual experiences.

Yes. We want to contribute through the care we provide, the research we share, and the tools and education we develop.

We do not want this approach to remain available only within our clinic. Helping other clinicians and organizations understand and apply what we learn is part of the mission. We also hope to expand broader advocacy as our capacity grows.

IOCH’s purpose has always been to serve people and the community. We believe healthcare should be guided by people’s needs, and access to meaningful care should not depend on how profitable someone’s care may be.

The nonprofit structure supports that commitment. Community support helps fund accessible care, research, technology, education, and work that reimbursement alone does not cover. Our resources are directed toward sustaining and expanding that mission.

Our overall goal is $600,000 over the next year, and approximately half has already been secured.

This supports growing and training our clinical and support teams, expanding medical services, and strengthening the technology and operations behind that care. We expect community support and revenue from clinical operations, after staffing and operating expenses, to help fund growth.

We welcome donations, loans, and other mission-aligned funding. Additional resources help us bring the right people and systems into place sooner.

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The request discussed in the presentation focuses on this transition and building capacity for our next stage of growth. When we described it as not being a “year-over-year ask,” we meant this particular transition need. Our goal is for clinical operations to become financially self-sustaining as capacity grows.

Research, developing and maintaining our electronic medical record, technology integrations, and connections between appointments require work that insurance reimbursement does not consistently cover. Continued community support helps sustain those efforts.

Yes. Volunteers and board members help identify opportunities and prepare applications.

As a young nonprofit developing an approach that brings together care, research, and technology, we have found that securing grants takes time. Some opportunities look for a longer organizational track record, established funding relationships, or evidence from programs operating at a larger scale.

We continue pursuing grants while building the relationships, experience, and evidence that strengthen future applications. Introductions to relevant funders and people with grant-writing expertise are welcome.

We welcome donations, loans, and other mission-aligned funding to help build our team and expand access. Donations of any size make a difference, and we welcome conversations about lending or other funding arrangements that support our nonprofit mission.

Sharing our work, telling someone about IOCH, volunteering your expertise, or cheering us on is valuable too. Every little bit helps, and we exist today because of that support. There is no expectation to contribute financially, especially if you are seeking care.

Use our contact page to tell us whom you would like to introduce and why you think there may be a useful connection.

We welcome relationships with healthcare professionals, community organizations, businesses, foundations, and individuals who share our commitment to understanding complex needs and improving care.

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Watch the presentation · Technology demonstration