Photos courtesy of Reactivate Muskoka
While Huntsville may be a small town, Dr. Rich Trenholm and Dr. Chad Barber are determined to bring the convenience and specialty services of rehabilitation therapists and sport and medicine physicians—readily available in large cities—to residents in Muskoka.
“Our team of rehabilitation therapists and sports medicine physicians is increasing, and in reality the kind of therapy that all of our practitioners practice is centred around movement-based therapy,” said Dr. Trenholm, sports medicine physician and co-owner of Reactivate Muskoka. “In our current location we just didn’t have the space to move so we wanted to create a facility that would be unique to Muskoka and Central Ontario that would allow us to practice movement-centric therapy. We need a lot of space to do that.”
Dr. Trenholm said Reactivate Muskoka is not a traditional rehabilitation clinic where you have one or two services available to patients. Instead Reactivate Muskoka offers a number of services and treatment options under one roof.
“We have a comprehensive team and we work together in collaboration with the patient as part of that team to help resolve their injuries or ongoing issues such as arthritis. A lot of orthopaedic surgeons are getting patients to exercise to do non-surgical management prior to them being considered for joint replacement. There’s a couple of ways to approach that conservative management; you can go to a physiotherapist or chiropractor—we have everybody under one roof and work collaboratively for the patient’s benefit,” said Dr. Trenholm. “We try to solve their issues as quickly and efficiently as possible. We want people to be out and enjoying life. If something is preventing them from doing that that’s why we’re here and that’s why we’re called Reactivate—you want to be active and you can’t so we want to reactivate you.”
The new facility will house a 2,300-square-foot gym with weights, rubber flooring and artificial turf.
“We have a comprehensive team of rehabilitative specialists and therapists that offer a wide range of treatments and therapies all under one roof; something that is unique to Muskoka. We have the ability to see clients with sport and exercise medicine physicians, such as myself, so we can have a diagnosis and the team can work with that diagnosis and know what kind of effective, evidence-based rehab techniques can be done to get the patient better, rather than getting rehabilitation and trying certain things and seeing if it works and then months and dollars go by and you have to start over again. We’re trying to improve the efficiency by which people experience rehabilitation,” said Dr. Trenholm. “You have to streamline people so they get better, we don’t want them coming in and seeing our team forever. We want them to be out enjoying life.”
Once restrictions due to COVID-19 have been lifted, the community and sports teams will be able to rent the facility for strength and conditioning, yoga, pilates and more.
“We have rubberized flooring and artificial turf so we can rehabilitate people on the surface they play on. The turf is there for lacrosse and soccer,” he said. “Our current physiotherapist, Bryan Lynd, has specialized certification with Titleist for golf-specific physiotherapy, our massage therapist, Mark Lewis, is a functional fitness personal trainer so he’ll be providing that as well. We have the flexibility and ability for people to come in, if they’re injured from anything—young, old, athletic, non-athletic—can come in from the injured state or to prevent injury from happening. If they’re wanting to maximize their potential with respect to a sport or going on a long hike, such as the West Coast Trail, come in and we’ll get your body ready for that. It’s a full spectrum of care.”
The majority of Reactivate Muskoka’s clients are non-athletic or non-competitive patients, noted Dr. Trenholm.
“It’s people that are active or are in pain and want to feel better. They’re going to reap the benefits of a facility like this. Everybody’s a champion and we’ll treat you like it,” he said. “Eighty per cent are older people with arthritis and they just want to walk or play with their grandkids. Some people want to fix their golf swing or running injuries. We can do video analysis and determine the root cause. A lot of people come in and point x is hurting but the cause is at point y. We put everybody back together from the outside in.”
“We acknowledge and understand it’s an investment in yourself to come and see us,” added Dr. Trenholm. “The way I put it to patients is if they have a clunk in their car or the muffler’s dragging on the ground they’re going to try and fix it; this is a clunk in your body. It’s worth the investment and because we have everybody working together in an efficient manner at our clinic, we hope there’s a cost saving back to our patients so they’re not spending a lot of time trying to figure things out or different treatments that may or may not be effective, so that we’re not wasting their time and dollars.”
Visits with sports medicine physicians Dr. Trenholm and Dr. Pierre Mikhail are covered under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP).
For now the clinic’s hours will remain the same and will expand to more evenings and weekends as additional specialists are added to the roster. This could include nutritionists, naturopaths, sport psychologists, kinesiologists, and expanding the orthopaedic surgery program.
“We’re extremely excited about the move because this is what our community deserves as an active community. This is not an uncommon type of practice in a large city such as Toronto or Ottawa. We’re a small town and we want to be able to offer all the bells and whistles people in cities are able to take advantage of,” said Dr. Trenholm. “This has been a dream of Chad and mine to put together so people can get the rehabilitation they deserve in our community. We want people to enjoy life, not get stuck in a rut of pain and dysfunction because that’s what they think is their new normal. Their new normal is what their normal was before or as close as we can get them to it.”
To make an appointment with one of the specialists at Reactivate Muskoka, visit reactivatemuskoka.com and use their online booking tool, or find them on Facebook or Instagram. Reach them by phone at 705-789-7600 or email at [email protected].
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Congratulations Chad and the rest of the team on your new location.