National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) also designated Thomas Jefferson University’s Spinal Cord Injury Center as one of only 14 model centers in the United States and the only one in the Delaware Valley

		Rehabilitation Medicine Neurosurgery Orthopedic Surgery News Archive Featured in the Media JeffNEWS Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center of the Delaware Valley

The Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center of the Delaware Valley (RSCICDV), a partnership between Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Magee Rehabilitation Hospital, will receive a $2 million federal grant to allow the center to continue its work to research and treat spinal cord injuries.

In addition to awarding Jefferson University $464,000 per year for a five-year period, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) of the U.S. Department of Education again designated the RSCICDV as a Model Spinal Cord Injury System of Care for a five-year period, making it one of only 14 such facilities in the United States and the only one in the Delaware Valley.

For the last five-year grant cycle, there were 16 federally-designated centers in the U.S. Jefferson/Magee have been funded as a Model Spinal Cord Injury System of Care since 1978. To qualify, a center must demonstrate that it has a comprehensive system of care for persons with spinal cord injury and that it can participate in education and collaborative and on-site research.

“Our staff is very proud to be recognized again as a center of excellence in clinical care and research,” said Ralph J. Marino, M.D., clinical director of the Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, and associate professor of Rehabilitation Medicine, Jefferson. “We are gratified by the NIDRR’s support of our work through this funding.”

“We are especially pleased to be able to continue the support of those we serve in the community,” said Mary Schmidt Read, PT, MS, the SCI Program Director at Magee Rehabilitation. “Over the years, the RSCICDV has been a strong, life-long resource for persons with spinal cord disorders.”

The Regional SCI Center of the Delaware Valley is a collaborative program with experts in orthopaedics, neurosurgery, rehabilitation medicine, trauma surgery, neuroradiology and urology, providing a continuum of care at both Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Magee Rehabilitation Hospital. Jefferson and Magee, along with MossRehab, all members of the Jefferson Health System, have been named by U.S.News & World Report in the magazine’s “America's Best Hospitals" issue as among the top medical rehabilitation facilities in the nation.

The center, which has treated more than 3,000 persons with spinal cord injury, provides for the multidisciplinary coordination of emergency and acute medical/surgical care, rehabilitation beginning at the onset of acute care and continuing lifetime, vocational evaluation and training, and lifetime follow-up care for persons with spinal cord injury.

With more than 50 percent of persons with spinal cord injury admitted within three days of injury, the Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center has demonstrated a mortality rate of five percent and has significantly reduced the severe secondary complications of traumatic spinal cord injury.