Charles Alexander, OTR/L, CWCE, CEES

Charles Alexander, OT, CEES, CWCE is a licensed Occupational Therapist in the state of Vermont and New York. He Graduated from Utica College in 2002 and has worked primarily in the arena of injury prevention, ergonomics, industrial rehabilitation and FCE. He is a Certified Ergonomic Evaluation Specialist (CEES) and has experience in both large and small business injury prevention efforts and ergonomics. His clinical focus has primarily been working with individuals who have work-related injuries. He works closely with several employers including (Green Mountain Power, Rhino Foods, Perigo, Twincraft, Velco, Bombardier Transportation, Volvo-Nova Bus, Mold-Rite Plastics and City of Burlington VT), in providing a mixture of onsite ergonomics, post offer/pre-employment testing, job analyses, and preventative programs that promote self-treatment and management. He is EPIC certified and is contracted in the legal arena as an expert witness.

Ralph Cheesman, BPE, B.Sc.(OT),Reg.(BC), CWCE

Ralph Cheesman is the CEO and Managing Partner of Re:Function Health Group Inc.  He is an Occupational Therapist by training.  Ralph has specialized in the provision of Functional Capacity Evaluations within the vocational rehabilitation health sector for 23 years.  He has been a clinical instructor within the Occupational Therapy Department at the University of British Columbia and developed the vocational rehabilitation training module for the Masters of Occupational Therapy curriculum.  As well, Ralph provides lectures pertaining to FCE services to a wide variety of conferences/organizations – Canadian Defence Lawyers Conference, WorkBC, ICBC Defence Counsel Forum, Victoria Bar Association, Managing Employees with Disabilities Conference, WorkSafeBC vocational rehabilitation consultant training, BCIT, and the Canadian Institute’s Forum on the Employer’s Duty to Accommodate Conference.  Ralph provides expert witness testimony in the Supreme Court of BC, at union arbitration hearings, and at WCAT tribunals.

Matthew Dodson, OTD, OTR/L

Matt has over a dozen years of experience addressing head injury and cognitive performance at clinical, administration, and program development levels. After developing and managing outpatient TBI OT programming at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center from 2009-2013, he worked as a rehabilitation program development and evaluation consultant for the Department of Defense both in the US and abroad from 2013-2018.  Known for an accessible instructional style that breaks down complex technical or theoretical concepts by emphasizing real world application and humor, he provides training in TBI, cognition, and program evaluation in a variety of settings. As the owner of Colorado-based Braintrust Services, he provides clinical cognitive rehabilitation, forensic testimony for head injury cases, and consultations with organizations that serve populations at risk for cognitive performance deficits, such as veterans and professional athletes.

Wayne Enright, Reg OT (BC), CWCE

Wayne is a cofounder and director of OrionHealth Care Inc, which has six clinics in Western Canada.   He works out of the OrionHealth Burnaby (Progressive Rehab) office in British Columbia.   He is a senior occupational therapist.  His primary areas of practice have included over 28 years of medical/legal consulting, functional capacity evaluations and cost of future care/life care planning evaluations.   Wayne has extensive experience mentoring new clinicians and has testified as an Expert Witness in the Supreme Court of British Columbia on close to 100 occasions.

Wayne has coauthored a number of scientific research studies pertaining to functional capacity testing.

Erica Galipeau, PT, CWCE, CEES

Erica is co-owner of Injury & Health Management Solutions Inc. (IHMS), near Burlington, Vermont. IHMS provides on-site services at such companies as Burton Snowboards, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Bombardier Transportation, Vermont Teddy Bear, Goodrich, and The Lane Press. These services include physical therapy, ergonomic evaluations, all levels of injury prevention and ergonomic training, direct problem solving of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), wellness, Post-Offer employment screenings, FCEs, ADA job analyses, and computer ergonomics.

Christina Howe, OTR, CWCE

Ms. Howe has been passionate about the field of Occupational Rehabilitation for 34 of her 35 years in practice. Her experience includes starting, designing and running two Occupational Medicine and Rehabilitation facilities offering the full scope of practice from Occupational Medicine through to Physical and Occupational Therapy, FCE’s, work hardening/conditioning and ergonomics, job analysis and on-site preventative services.

An Instructor for Matheson for 25 years, she has trained thousands of professionals worldwide. As the lead instructor for the Matheson FCE Certification Program she has been instrumental in leading the curriculum development for the FCE Certification program in collaboration with a team of experts from the US and Canada. She is chair of the Matheson Certification Committee and continues in practice in Bedford, NH performing FCE’s for Medical-Legal and worker’s compensation cases.

As President of Matheson Ms. Howe looks forward to continuing the growth and development of the Matheson System while training high level Thinking Evaluators around the world.

She continues her clinical practice in Bedford, NH performing ergonomic services for local companies and FCE’s for medical/legal and worker’s compensation cases.

Gerard Kerr, Reg OT (BC), CWCE

Gerard has over 25 years of experience in a wide variety of physical medicine, mental health, and vocational settings and has practiced in the South Pacific, Britain, and in North America. Today, he is a senior consultant occupational therapist and founding member of Progressive Rehab (Orion Health) in Vancouver, BC.

Gerard’s clinical areas of expertise include work capacity evaluations, life care planning, work site assessments, and injured worker management. Gerard is a Matheson Certified Work Capacity Evaluator—Advanced. His clinical practice focuses on providing expert opinion to the medical legal community; he has considerable supreme court experience.

Min Trevor Kyi, OT, CWCE, CDA, DipFCE

Min Trevor Kyi is an Occupational Therapist and Clinical Associate Professor with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. He has lectured internationally throughout Canada, the United Stated, Europe, and Asia. He has provided expert witness testimony for the Supreme Court in the areas of: Functional Capacity Evaluation, Occupational Therapy, Brain Injury, and Ergonomics. He is the first non-physician recipient of the UBC’s Faculty of Medicine Award for Clinical Instructor.

John LaCourse, PhD, CPE, CEES

“Dr. John,” as he likes to be called, is a board-certified professional ergonomist providing service in ergonomic engineering. He is also Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering within the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of New Hampshire. He specializes in engineering controls of cumulative trauma disorders. Dr. John’s expertise has been tapped nationally and internationally by courts, industry, national boards, and the military.

Louise Lynch, PT, CEES, CWCE

An instructor in industrial rehabilitation around the world, Louise has been guiding patient recovery in orthopedic/manual therapy and industrial rehabilitation and ergonomics for more than 20 years. She specializes in the evaluation and treatment of musculoskeletal disorders that limit people from working at their maximum potential.

She is a co-owner of Injury & Health Management Solutions Inc. (IHMS), located in Colchester, VT (near Burlington). IHMS provides on-site services at such companies as Burton Snowboards, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Bombardier Transportation, Ben & Jerry’s, State of Vermont Agency of Transportation, and Twincraft Soap. These services include onsite physical therapy, ergonomic evaluation, all levels of injury prevention and ergonomic training, direct problem solving of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), wellness, Post-Offer employment screenings, ADA job analysis, and computer ergonomics.

Leonard Matheson, PhD, CVE, CRC

Dr. Matheson has been a rehabilitation professional for more than 45 years, beginning in 1970, as a licensed psychologist, Certified Vocational Evaluator, and Certified Rehabilitation Counselor. He and his brother, Roy, were pioneers in the development of work evaluation training. He is the originator of work hardening, work tolerance screening, and work capacity evaluations and has participated in setting the national standards of practice for work hardening and functional capacity evaluation. He designed many of the tests and treatment models now used worldwide in occupational rehabilitation.

Today, Dr. Matheson is the research scientist and founding director of EpicRehab. His doctoral work at the Andrus Gerontology Center at the University of Southern California focused on cognitive function, and among his current projects is the development of new methods to evaluate and treat people who have brain injury, and the reliable measurement of physical functional ability via self-reporting. He also maintains an active consulting practice in Chesterfield, Missouri, working with people who have physical, neurological, and psychological disabilities, as well as with businesses and professionals on career satisfaction and employee selection. He uses a cognitive behavioral approach to help clients learn positive psychology strategies for managing their lives.

Dr. Matheson has been a consultant to several Fortune 500 employers, the Social Security Administration, the US Congress, and hundreds of rehabilitation centers and governmental agencies in the United States, Canada, and other countries. He also spent 15 years as an associate professor of occupational therapy and neurology at the Washington University School of Medicine.

Among Dr. Matheson’s more than 120 scientific papers and textbook chapters are the FCE chapters in the American Medical Association’s definitive textbook Disability Evaluation. He served on the editorial board of Spine for ten years, and he currently serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation and on the editorial board of Work.

Roy Matheson, BS, CMTM

Founder and President of Matheson, Roy sees his life’s calling as “stretching people to learn.” He has trained thousands of allied professionals across the globe. Roy and his brother, Dr. Leonard Matheson, were pioneers in the development of work evaluation training. He has assembled a team of practitioners and trainers who share his vision of a safe workplace manned by workers whose physical abilities match those of the job.

With 25 years in occupational rehabilitation and an in-depth study of the intention and legal foundation of Title I of the ADAAA behind him, Roy has become a thought leader in the application of the law to the management of workplace disability, hiring, absence, stay-at-work, and return-to-work issues. His “Emerging RTW Decision Model” is winning praise from employers and work evaluators across the United States.

Roy is also the creator of the Matheson System for Equitable Employment Determination (SEED), a training manual and software package that outlines hiring, retention, and RA best practices. It helps disability managers, absence managers, and work evaluation service providers to comply with the ADAAA by building a tailored “plan to not discriminate.”

 

Tania Percy, BScOT, CWCE

Tania started consulting with Progressive Rehab in 1997. Her practice involves work capacity evaluations, cost of care assessments, and community-based rehabilitation. She also trains and mentors at Progressive Rehab for WorkSafeBC FCEs to ensure quality and consistency.

Tania is highly skilled in dealing with the difficulties that traumatic brain injury sequela can bring to families, particularly when a child or adolescent is involved (she previously worked in adolescent psychiatry and brain injury rehab). During a stint in Ontario, she coordinated legislated multidisciplinary assessments and provided training and mentoring to other team members.

Judy Silva, OTR/L,CWCE

Judy Silva graduated from San Jose State University in 1991 with a bachelor of science in occupational therapy. She worked in multiple settings in California in the beginning of her career, which led to her settling into the industrial rehabilitation, hand therapy and outpatient physical disability settings. Judy assisted in developing and managing three hand therapy clinics in CA and two in WA. She is trained in the Matheson System of Physical Capacity Evaluation and Epic Lift Capacity Test. Judy has a long relationship with the Matheson group, having attended their courses since 1992. She moved to Washington in 2004 and continues to enjoy working in Industrial Rehabilitation and Hand Therapy. In 2015, she joined the fantastic Northwest Return to Work team. Outside of work, Judy enjoys spending time with her grown children, community service with her church, gardening, traveling, outdoor activities, and her book club.

Neil A Taylor, OT, CWCE, CwcHP

Neil Taylor is the Regional Director of Workers Compensation Operations/Services for ATI Physical Therapy. Neil earned his Associates in Allied Health Science at Lebanon Valley College before acceptance to Temple University’s School of Allied Health Sciences, where he received his Bachelor of Science in Occupational Therapy in 1989. At Temple University he served as the Occupational Therapy class President his senior year and was awarded the Helen Hopkins Leadership Award for Temple University’s School of Allied Health Sciences.

Neil currently holds certifications through Matheson & Associates in Functional Capacity Evaluation & Ergonomic Evaluations, as well as a National Certification in Workers Compensation. He currently is registered as a Workers Compensation Healthcare Provider compensation certification in Delaware / Maryland. Neil has concentrated his practice as an Occupational Therapist since 1994 to the field of work injury with concentration on acute rehabilitation/ work conditioning, return to work programs, functional capacity evaluations & ergonomics. He daily works closely with all parties in the field of workers compensation including Physicians, Risk Managers, Employers, Attorneys, Occupational Medicine Physicians/ Nurses, Nurse Case Managers assisting in case resolution as needed.

Neil has extensive experience providing consultation and education to physicians, insurance carriers, case managers, and attorneys. He has provided expert testimony before the IAB in Delaware for many cases. Additionally, Neil is an annual guest lecturer for the University of Delaware’s Doctorate Level Physical Therapy Program “The Therapists Role as a Healthcare Provider in Worker’s Compensation”, and also has lectured on the topic “Functional Testing: FCE’s, Fit for Duty & Functional Evaluations”.

Neil’s role at ATI includes Workers Compensation Training for all Physical & Occupational Therapists providing rehabilitation to the injured worker. He also assists in internal Case Management & Quality Control with PT/ OT service delivery at ATI Physical Therapy. Most recently in 2015, Neil has begun to assist Matheson Training Solutions Instructors in FCE Certification Courses.
Neil’s outside interests include involvement in church ministry & missions work (local & international), coaching sports, any outdoor activities and spending time with family & friends.

 

Shannon Smith, Senior Consultant Occupational Therapist | BSc(OT)

Shannon has a wide range of experience that includes community rehabilitation with both adults and children, return to work support, ergonomic assessment, functional and work capacity evaluations, and cost of future care assessments. Her practice has included work in both Canada and the United States. She has experience across a range of diagnoses, including orthopaedic, brain injury, mental health, spinal cord injury, neurological and chronic pain. Additionally, Shannon has post-graduate training in upper extremity function and has qualified as a Certified Hand Therapist, which brings an added level of expertise to her practice for clients with upper extremity injuries. She has been invited by WorkSafeBC to present on functional testing to the hand therapy network in British Columbia who provide treatment services to injured workers.

 

Lindsey Townsend, Senior Consultant Occupational Therapist | BSc(OT), BSc(Kin), Dip (FCE)

Lindsey joined Progressive Rehab in 1996 after working a number of years at GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre in spinal cord injury, brain injury, and child and adolescent services, and for Greater Vancouver Mental Health providing adolescent mental health services. She has developed a community rehabilitation practice that focuses on catastrophic injury and includes children and adolescents. She has expertise in community brain injury rehabilitation and has worked with clients in both the initial rehabilitation phase as well as longer term maintenance phase. She has experience working with clients dealing with mental health difficulties and/or chronic pain.  Her additional experience includes occupational therapy services to pre-schoolers with a range of developmental delays and medical conditions.

 

 

News/Blog

Matheson Marketplace

Schedule

“This Ergonomics Evaluation Certification Program is extremely valuable. Dr. LaCourse is an excellent instructor with years of hands-on experience. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in reducing cumulative trauma disorders.”

“Also, I just completed my very first FCE today……. And it was AWESOME!!! I could hear you talking in the back of my head the whole time! Very exciting!! Thanks for such a great learning experience!”

“I was so impressed with my entire Matheson experience.”

“As a provider of FCEs for 12-plus years, I have been through several training programs. I would recommend Matheson without reservation. Thanks to your training, my staff is the best prepared in my area. It has made a difference for my business and has set us ahead of our competition.”

“Far and away the best certification course I have attended in my seven-year professional career. The instructors are knowledgeable and apply all of the information to real-world scenarios. Thank you!”

This Ergonomics Evaluation Certification Program is extremely valuable. Dr. LaCourse is an excellent instructor with years of hands-on experience. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in reducing cumulative trauma disorders.”

“Of all the FCE training I have received, Matheson is the most evidence-based. I like that it is a battery of standardized tests, and not a standard battery of tests. It also requires thinking as an evaluator, unlike other programs that don’t allow you to consider any non-quantitative factors, which results in an opinion of functional capacity lacking in external validity. The Matheson FCE makes the most of what is available right now.”

“The Amended ADA Webinar was outstanding and I really appreciate your willingness to do them.  You have gotten to the heart of the matter in the “gray areas” that people have familiarity with, but are not comfortable discussing.  I treasure every one of these webinars.  They have helped me be a better evaluator and allowed me to speak intelligently to our employers and other referral sources.”

“I just wanted to e-mail you and let you know that I found this webinar to be extremely helpful to me in my position as an the on site PT manager. In my opinion your webinar provided excellent information about the ADA issues we may face and invaluable advice to avoid legal pitfalls related to our work site analysis and testing procedures.”

“We are utilizing the Matheson philosophy not only for Functional Capacity Evaluation, but also for the foundation of interdisciplinary treatment of chronic pain patients at our clinic in Waltham MA, Boston PainCare. The culture of function is throughout all of our departments, interventional, functional rehabilitation, medication management, sleep, and behavioral.
Spending the week training for FCEs in Keene, NH was very exciting as it allowed me to know that we are not only on the…”

The instructors did an excellent job of breaking down the complex concepts into the most simple and understandable pieces of information. My folders of countless papers from various sources, both online and off, have been consolidated into one well-laid out reference book!

Thank you for having the Essential Function Job Analysis course available. I have been doing job analyses and post offer test formulation at my company for 8 years now and this course taught me that we need to (and will) make some adjustments to our procedures to better defend any possible legal challenges. That means a great deal to me as a business owner.

“Your webinars have made me a better evaluator and allowed me to speak intelligently to our employers and other referral sources.”

Testimonials

Matheson Development