History

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We’ve Been a Leader in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation for More Than 100 Years.

Named after our original benefactor, Lucien Moss, MossRehab’s roots stretch back to 1900, when our institution began as The Lucien Moss Home for Incurables of the Hebrew Faith. The Moss Home helped chronically ill people learn how to live with their ailment in a dignified and humane manner. This was unusual for the time, when it was common for hospitals to turn away people who had no hope of being successfully treated by current medical practice.

Endowing an institution for people with chronic illnesses put Lucien Moss ahead of the medical mainstream and today he is recognized as a visionary.

Rehabilitation Roots Begin to Grow

Twenty years after its inception the Lucien Moss Home expanded in scope to include care for people with cancer and paralysis. A few decades later, MossRehab as we know it today began to take shape. In 1959 ground was broken at 1200 West Tabor Road for a new facility – Moss Rehabilitation Hospital (later to become MossRehab). Back then, the practice of physical rehabilitative medicine was just emerging, and once again, our institution took a leading role in a developing field.

An Active Research Agenda Gets Underway

In the 1960s MossRehab became a stroke evaluation center and it initiated patient care programs for arthritis, peripheral vascular disease, chronic pulmonary disease and neurological disorders. It also embarked on an active research agenda. In 1966, MossRehab received its first outside research grant of $500 to test drugs for the National Drug Company of Philadelphia. This was just the beginning of our efforts to become one of the nation’s most respected rehabilitation research institutes.

Today MossRehab is one of the country’s most clinically advanced rehabilitation hospitals. We remain on the vanguard of research for rehabilitative medicine while also adhering to our original mission of tending to the human dimension of illness as we improve the quality of life for our patients.

More MossRehab Milestones

1970s

Becomes a major advocate for people with disabilities
Actively ventures into community outreach
Sponsors its first art exhibition of works by artists with physical disabilities
Creates a driving school to teach individuals with disabilities how to become safe and independent drivers
Starts a therapeutic music program with the Settlement Music School
Introduces a camp program for MossRehab outpatients and former patients
Establishes a Social Action Committee that lobbies for city ordinances to make local structures accessible to people with disabilities
In collaboration with Drexel and Temple Universities establishes a federally funded Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers, making MossRehab an important national center ob basic research in physical medicine
Establishes a federally funded Rehabilitation Research Education Center
Arranges to supplement services for The Medical College of Pennsylvania Hospital and Frankford Hospital
Begins collaboration with Temple University Hospital to train physicians in the field of physical medicine and rehabilitaion and has subsequently trained approximately 5% of the physiatrists in the U.S.

1980s

Opens its first freestanding comprehensive outpatient center in Philadelphia
Opens its first freestanding comprehensive outpatient center in Montgomery County
Operates a full-fledged Rehabilitation Engineering Service to design solutions for problems patients face at home, on the job or when traveling
Creates the Joint Replacement Center, uniting the expertise of MossRehab’s rehabilitation and Albert Einstein Medical Center’s orthopedic surgeons to treat patients suffering from chronic joint pain and immobility
Establishes the Drucker Brain Injury Center, the region’s first center dedicated to helping people with traumatic brain injuries
With support from a Pennsylvania state grant, begins a comprehensive outpatient program for adolescents and adults with spina bifida

1990s

MossRehab becomes part of Einstein Healthcare Network
Launches Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute to consolidate the many research activities at MossRehab and to foster new initiatives in rehabilitation research aimed at improving human function and adaptation to disability
Opens MossRehab Stroke Center, providing programs that enable people who have had strokes to increase their level of functioning and ability to return to their home and employment
Becomes the only rehabilitation center in the region with onsite prosthetic and orthotic fabrication facilities
Establishes the Sheerr Gait and Motion Analysis Lab as a clinical and research facility, offering some of the country’s most advanced diagnostic labs to help identify causes of ambulation problems in patients with neuromuscular and orthopedic injuries and patients with prostheses
Launches the Motor Control Analysis Lab, one of the few labs in the country to focus on studying the complex science of muscle dysfunction that occurs due to brain injury
Starts training physical medicine and rehabilitation residents at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital

2000s

Main facility moves to Elkins Park, co-located in same facility as Einstein Medical Center at Elkins Park hospital
Establishes partnerships with Sacred Heart Hospital, Doylestown Hospital, Aria Health Frankford campus and Aria Health Bucks County campus
Offers full-service care to treat athletic-related injuries through Moss Sports Rehab
Accredited by CARF as a Stroke Specialty Program—one of the first in the nation to receive this endorsement
Exclusive U.S. clinical trial site for ReWalk, an innovative assistive device that helps people who are paralyzed walk again
Opens the Right Hemisphere Stroke Center, the only center in the U.S. dedicated to treating all components of right hemisphere stroke syndrome
The Sheerr Gait and Motion Analysis Laboratory is first in the region to become “Fully Accredited” by the Commission for Motion Laboratory Accreditation
The Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute moves to its new research tower on the MossRehab Elkins Park Campus