The speech therapists at CGH Medical Center are here to help you when an injury, illness or other medical condition affects your ability to speak, understand speech or swallow. With the help of our speech therapists, you can retrain the muscles and nerves in your mouth and throat. And you can learn how to restructure your life in order to deal with the challenges that might stay with you when therapy is complete.
Speech rehabilitation services we offer
Our speech therapists can help with common communication difficulties such as:
- Aphasia. An inability to understand speech or express thoughts with speech characterizes this condition, which is commonly caused by stroke or a brain tumor.
- Cognitive-communication impairments. Underlying attention, memory, abstract reasoning or problem-solving deficits characterize these issues, which are possibly related to a stroke, brain injury or underlying disease.
- Dysarthria. This form of speech is slurred or slow, and it can be caused by neurological injuries, such as stroke.
- Vocal quality concerns. People with these issues have vocal tones that are too loud or too soft, and those issues are commonly caused by vocal abuse or cancer. CGH is proud to offer Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT) LOUD certified speech therapy services for patients struggling with Parkinson's Disease and other neurological conditions.
- Pediatric speech/language and feeding therapy.
We provide help with swallowing
The nerves and muscles that impact your ability to speak clearly may also play a role in your ability to manipulate food and swallow it without choking. Our therapists can assist people who have these chewing and swallowing disorders, which may be caused by stroke or another form of brain injury.
Creating your personal speech/language pathology plan
Our speech therapy team is available to help you on an inpatient basis when you're admitted to CGH Medical Center as a patient. We also offer outpatient treatments to help you recover when you've left the hospital and are living at home once more.
Our speech pathologists develop an individualized plan, tailored to your needs. The therapies we might use include:
- Nutritional counseling based on your swallowing skills, so you can understand what foods might not be safe for you to eat.
- Training in alternate forms of communication, so you can make your thoughts and feelings known despite an inability to speak clearly.
- Training in speech-generating devices, so you can use external tools to help you communicate.
Our speech therapists can also develop daily home training programs that are unique to your strengths and weaknesses. These programs can help you maintain swallowing, cognitive-linguistic, speech or language skills.
Our team also offers education to both you and your family members about your medical condition, your treatment plan and the tools you're using to improve. That communication can help everyone to understand both what's happened in the past as well as what the plan is for the future.
Hours and locations
The speech pathology team is available Monday through Friday from 7:00 am - 5:00 pm.
We offer outpatient services at the CGH Locust Street Medical Center, at 1809 N. Locust Ave., Sterling, IL 61081 and CGH Morrison Medical Center, at 105 S. Heaton Street, Morrison, IL 61270.
We offer inpatient services in CGH Medical Center, at 100 E. LeFevre Road, Sterling, IL 61081.
To find out more about our speech language pathologists, visit our provider directory.