- December 14, 2025
A new concussion program that is part of a joint partnership between Halifax Health and Brooks Rehabilitation will provide more services to patients at Volusia and Flagler County rehabilitation clinics.
Through the multidisciplinary program, regional medical providers will work with therapists who have been specially trained to work with individuals who have suffered a head injury. There have been 5,415 patient visits to the Port Orange clinic since October 2016, when the Halifax-Brooks partnership expanded to five different locations.
Halifax Health and Brooks Rehabilitation will be opening another outpatient rehabilitation clinic in Deltona. The clinic is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2019 and will be located off I-4 in Deltona on the same campus as the existing Halifax Health Emergency Department.
The program is still in the early stages and the doctor who will be performing the initial evaluation of patients is currently receiving referrals, according to Astrid Gonzalez Parilla, executive director of Rehabilitation Services for Halifax Health.
Parilla explained that the program is mirrored off a model used by Brooks Rehabilitation in Jacksonville. Patients with a concussion will see a lead doctor who will then direct them to the right facility or physician.
"We noticed there is nothing like that here in the community right now," Parilla said. "We need to make sure we're empowering people to achieve the highest level of recovery. Our goal is to have a complete integrated network."
According to Steve Cummings, Halifax Health regional director of outpatient rehabilitation, bringing in this new program will enable the hospital to reach more patients that have specific medical needs. He added that the program is also a way to answer the increase of identification of various concussions.
The program is expected to be fully rolled out in all the clinics, including Port Orange and Ormond, by the beginning of summer.
"This is an underserved group that we will be able to provide services to that we've never been able to provide before to the level they need," Cummings said. "We want to minimize the burden because patients go through a lot and they have a lot of appointments and we want to make sure we're seeing you at the right places, at the right time."
The clinics already provide physical, speech and occupational therapy services from pediatrics to adult patients.
Cummings added that part of the goal is to make sure clinics are not places where multiple patients are being seen at the same time but rather worked with on an individual basis. There will also be additional training that focuses on oncology. Cummings said the program will be known as having clinics "without walls."
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, traumatic brain injury is the cause of about 30% of all injury deaths and every day 153 people in the U.S. die from injuries that include TBI.
Halifax Health Port Orange Physical Therapist Laura Muller said that while at the Port Orange clinic the majority of patients are in a higher age group, they do work with children and teens, an age group that may especially benefit from the new concussion program.
"It covers the whole spectrum of kids with injuries, kids from high school with sports injuries, which I think will end up with the concussion part too," Muller said.
