Center of Medicine and Dentistry

The Matheny Center of Medicine and Dentistry provides services to all of Matheny’s inpatients and to outpatients from 12 New Jersey counties. Services available include:

• Dentistry
• Adaptive seating and mobility evaluations
• Primary care
• Therapies
• Women’s health
• Neurology
• Optometry
• Physiatry
• Urology

Matheny’s seating and mobility assistive technology clinic is a highly intensive and personalized service which provides the perfect match of assistive technology to individuals with developmental disabilities. Occupational therapists, physical therapists and rehabilitation technicians work as a team to help patients choose the assistive technology tools that best meet their needs and provide ease of care. The clinic specializes in providing custom seating and mobility devices, from the most basic manual wheelchairs to the most sophisticated power mobility and power seating systems, designed to optimize function and minimize deformities for individuals with severe physical impairments. Matheny therapists and rehab technicians are certified as assistive technology practitioners and suppliers by the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North American (RESNA).

Thanks to a $99,000 grant from the Merck Company Foundation, Matheny is now able to take its seating clinic to off-site locations throughout northern and central New Jersey. The grant funded the purchase and equipping of a van, which serves as a mobile workstation stocked with seating evaluation supplies, a variety of wheelchair seating cushions and backs, wheelchair tires, accessories, hardware and tools. It enables therapists and rehab technicians to provide emergency services such as repairs on-site and to transport equipment to and from Matheny’s rehab engineering shop quickly and efficiently.

Because adult women with disabilities are just as susceptible to breast and cervical cancer and menstrual and menopausal problems as women without disabilities, Matheny has a gynecologist on staff. Women with disabilities may or may not be verbal, and, as a result, their doctors need to be extremely patient and understanding, often taking a pediatric approach.

To assess swallowing difficulties, Matheny uses a state-of-the-art procedure called Fiberoptic Endoscopic Evaluation of Swallowing (FEES). It is a minimally invasive method of evaluating swallowing abnormalities and is an alternative to the more invasive-ray techniques such as barium swallowing. It is also significantly less time consuming and costly, while also being much more comfortable for the patient.

For information of the Matheny Center of Medicine and Dentistry, Call (908) 234-0011, ext. 771.
For information specifically about the seating and mobility clinic, Call (908) 234-0011, ext 722.