Sadly, the biggest single scam ever perpetuated against brain injury survivors and their families was carried out by a number of leading rehabilitation centers in the early 1990's.  It is presented here on these pages  because it continues to have relevancy for today. 

Back in 1989, at 46 years of age, Lucy Gwin became a head injury statistic.  She suffered a head injury at the hands of a drunk driver.  After a stint in an acute care center she was moved to a rehab center operated by a firm known as New Medico. 

   Three weeks later Lucy felt well enough to leave New Medico.  However, New Medico had other ideas.  They knew that Ms. Gwin had not come close to exhausting her insurance coverage, and they were not willing to discharge her until they had siphoned off every possible every penny. 

     When she objected they locked her in a "quiet room" and withdrew her telephone privileges.  Not to be undone Lucy,  smuggled a message to a friend on the outside who helped her to escape this unlawful  imprisonment.

      Once free, this career activist set out to gain freedom for others similarly confined.  Ultimately, her goal was to end once and for all such unlawful confinement.  It wasn't long before she realized that one lone voice wouldn't make much of a difference.  So she gathered some like-minded allies and set out on this heroic quest. url: http://www.mouthmag.org/

     Her determination  and activism resulted in justice department investigations, FBI raids and Congressional hearings.  For details see: Union Calendar No. 594, 102D Congress, 2d Session, HR 102-1059. Banner headlines decrying the abuse of head injury patients appeared on the front page of  The New York Times 3/16/92,  and other leading newspapers. 

     In the end New Medico, and  Rebound (another rehab chain) were drummed out of business.  The owners were subjects of  civil and criminal law suits, and Congress created the Traumatic Brain Injury Act of 1996, copies of which may be downloaded from the congressional document web site known as Thomas http://thomas.loc.gov/.  The following search instructions should take you to the document. 

     On the Thomas home page, in the "search by bill number" window type "hr248";  in the "search by word/phrase window" type in "prevention of traumatic brain injury" and hit the search button on the screen.  Do not include quote marks in the text that you type in the search windows.

    In October 1998 the National Institutes of Health convened a TBI Rehabilitation Consensus Conference to re-examine the state of TBI rehabilitation.  The testimony that I presented at that conference can be viewed on this web site in a document entitled TBI Rehabilitation The Patient's Perspective.  The overall consensus of the conference was that although things are much improved over the bad old days TBI rehab still leaves much to be desired. 

     Y2K Rub.  The decade between 1980 and 1990 was the golden era of the TBI Rehab industry.  They were making money hand over fist. They made so much money so quickly that they attracted attention of Wall Street.  TBI rehab was described as a leading growth industry in a December 29, 1987 article on the Business and Health pages of the New York Times. 

     They were so busy making money that they totally lost sight of their oath to do no harm. Apparently they deluded them selves into believing that TBI survivors and their families were docile and brain dead.  Such attitudes haven't changed much over the past decade, but at least they are not quite as blatant in their abuse and neglect.

     In fact,  it was this very same arrogance by the rehabilitation industry that led to the creation of Head Injury Hotline in 1983.  Even through the fog of TBI it was clear to me that the rehab industry was not going to be very  helpful in my recovery. In fact, it became painfully clear that left up to their own devices they would cause more harm than good. 

     It was at that point that I realized that surviving my brain injury, was largely up to me. It also occurred to me that physically surviving TBI was only the first of many steps on the long road to recovery.  The real trick to surviving TBI was in living well in spite of the many chronic impairments that it causes.  I can't tell you how disappointing a realization this was for me. But I accepted the challenge and set about digging and searching for clues, and then sharing my findings with other survivors and their families. 

     I am scheduled to address an federal, Interagency Conference on TBI 2000.  The conference will take place in December 1999.  My working title is the TBI Rehab:  The Real Y2K Bug.  Your comments are welcome and might be incorporated into my testimony.  brain@headinjury.com