New physical therapist joins Balance & Hearing Institute
“I love it so far,” said Phelps, a Georgia native who traveled from Washington state, where she worked at an outpatient orthopedics clinic, to East Tennessee, a move closer to family, to take on the role.
Coming to Farragut, “I had an interest in working with vestibular disorders and balance,” she said.
At Balance & Hearing Institute, “we treat disorders of the inner ear, and we also treat just general balance disorders as well,” Phelps added. “I feel like I brought a fresh set of eyes because I’m the first (physical therapist) who worked here since the PT who started the program, about five years ago, and I pretty recently graduated,” bringing knowledge of up-to-date education to the table.
Balance & Hearing Institute, 11000 Kingston Pike Suite 5, is a new physical therapy arm of Farragut ENT & Allergy, which provides ear, nose and throat testing and care at 144 Concord Road in Farragut.
“They didn’t have any physical therapy treatment before they started the new (vestibular) program five years ago,” Phelps said. “They had the testing for vestibular disfunction, but they didn’t have a way to rehab patients on site, That’s what I bring to the table. I can take patients through rehab that corrects the issue.”
Before Phelps came to the clinic, Alicia Flores “would do all our testing, and then we would have to refer out for people who needed physical therapy treatment,” said Krystal Holcomb, office manager. “Then we opened this building here (in the Balance & Hearing Institute location) so we could do treatments on site.”
“Which, makes it different than everybody else,” said Flores, director of vestibular services and who has been conducting vestibular testing for the past seven years for Farragut ENT & Allergy. “We can do diagnosis and treatment all at the same place and follow up. The communication between Brandi and myself is something we can’t find anywhere else.
“Vestibular sounds very complicated, but everybody has to use their vestibular system, or their balance system, for daily life,” she added. “A lot of times, primary cares and other specialities don’t really take into consideration all the possible factors that we have and patients suffer sickness, chronically, for several years and fall risks.
“We see that from a very wide perspective. We consider all the aspects of balance, from the inner ear to the toes. We can diagnose and treat that to improve their quality of life and prevent falls.”
One tool to help in-patients’ treatment is a computerized dynamic posturography, which “tests all the sensory systems relating to balance,” Flores said.
With the new institute, she said patients get full-on care. “It’s nice because we get to be with the patient all the way from the beginning all the way to the end of their care, and everything in-between,” Phelps said.
The Balance & Hearing Institute is open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.
For more information, visit farragutent.com.
