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Medical Director, Chair, Program Director
Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital & Care Network/University of Chicago PM&R Program
Dr. Michelle Gittler fell deeply in love with rehabilitation medicine in medical school. She has been practicing rehabilitation medicine for over 33 years at Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital, where she advocates for all individuals with disabilities, regardless of their socioeconomic status, for the highest quality of rehabilitative services.
While working on the near west side, Dr. Gittler accidentally became an expert in working with individuals who sustained violently acquired disabilities. Dr. Gittler has been on the forefront of promoting the concept of firearm violence as a public health issue. In addition to working with individuals with violently acquired injuries, Dr. Gittler also spends a great deal of time working with individuals who have sustained disabling conditions, often secondary to lack of access to preventive and primary care. While she works with myriad kinds of disabling conditions, she is particularly interested in spinal cord injury care, polytrauma, and care of the amputee including prosthetics. She has started a "deinstitutionalization program", seeing patients who are currently from nursing homes who did not get rehabilitation services, who have potential for discharge home, or meaningful functional improvement, for an inpatient rehabilitation stay. She additional works for the Medicaid Advisory Unit with the University of Illinois as a physiatric expert for Illinois Healthcare and Family Services (Medicaid).
She is currently the medical director and DIO at Schwab rehabilitation Hospital, and the CMO for Post Acute Care at Sinai Chicago.
In addition to patient care, Dr. Gittler is passionate about graduate medical education. She is the Program Director for the PMR residency program at Schwab, and has been for over 30 years, clearly exceeding viable halflife
