Verrier is also seeking ways to better measure the rehabilitation needs of each patient. She helped develop the Community Balance and Mobility Scale, which was designed to evaluate people who have balance problems brought on by traumatic brain injury. The approach looks promising and has just undergone validity testing.

Whatever the injury, Verrier believes each patient’s therapeutic program “needs to be customized to the individual – because each patient is specific. I want it to have the specificity, duration, frequency and repetition required to gain maximum functional ability.”

For this reason, she is also studying service delivery – and how it can be improved to allow for more optimal and customized rehabilitation. “Distinctive excellence is important in rehabilitation.”

One of Verrier’s studies showed the different funding systems that exist depending on where a spinal cord injury occurs – and the implications for rehabilitation therapy.

“For example, if you are a runner and you trip in the street, fall down and break your neck – and there is nobody to sue – you become a quadriplegic who is essentially managed by the public funding system.

“If you trip over a cord at work, have the same injury and are covered by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, you will see a lot of different benefits coming your way that help you get reintegrated into work and function,” Verrier says.

Her goal: “To make sure that the right services are given to the right client at the right time, and that they make a difference in the actual function and recovery of that individual.”