It’s something patients, families, staff, volunteers, and visitors feel from the moment they pull in the driveway: Hope is Here.

Over the last five decades, Shepherd Center has grown from a six-bed hospital specializing in spinal cord injury care into the premier neurorehabilitation facility of the Southeast, offering state-of-the-art care for patients experiencing the most complex conditions, including spinal cord injuries, brain injuries, stroke, and multiple sclerosis. This care, in addition to the support we offer patient families and our staff, defines our mission.

In our 2026 Annual Report: Hope is Here, you’ll see how our incredible inpatient rehabilitation programs, community-based outpatient services, and research and innovation teams support patients and their families, allowing them to return to what they love with independence and dignity. You’ll also find the remarkable progress achieved through Pursuing Possible: The Campaign for Shepherd Center, and updates on the hospital renovations that will allow us to care for more patients in the years to come.

The full report is available for download here.

Liv Nyankori, BSW, BSN, RN, CRRN, CCM, is the new director of admissions and case management at Shepherd Center. Nyankori has worked at the hospital since 2007, much of that time in the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Program, including as an Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) nurse educator, post-acute nurse manager, and post-acute program manager.  

In her new role, Nyankori oversees the full case management cycle across the continuum of care — from patient access and admission through care coordination, discharge planning, and long-term transition needs. She leads the case management teams and guides the development of an integrated, patient-centered strategy that supports individuals and families throughout their rehabilitation journey. 

“Liv brings a strong record of fostering teamwork, solving complex problems, and helping create the best possible experience for the patients and families we serve,” said Shari McDowell, PT, DPT, FASIA, FACHE, Shepherd Center’s chief operating officer. “Her highly collaborative approach to support Shepherd’s mission and ensure each patient receives the right care at the right time makes her an excellent fit for this role.”  

“My favorite thing about working at Shepherd is the deep sense of purpose that comes with being part of this mission,” Nyankori said. “After nearly 20 years here, I’m still inspired by the resilience of our patients and families and the way every discipline works together to help them rebuild their lives. The culture of compassion, teamwork, and innovation is something truly special, and I feel grateful every day to contribute to an organization that makes such a meaningful impact.” 

In addition to her role at Shepherd, Nyankori currently serves on the Brain Injury Association of Georgia Board, where she advocates for awareness, education, and support for individuals and families affected by brain injury.  

Nyankori and her husband, Edward, have two daughters. She enjoys staying involved in the community, including her daughters’ school and sports activities, as well as traveling. The family shares their home with their two adopted dogs, Marty and Coco, who, she says, keep life fun and lively.  

In a new podcast with Shepherd Radio, Director of Workers' Compensation Heddi Silon discusses the admissions process for patients covered under worker’s compensation.

Download the podcast as an audio file above, or access it at shepherd.org/radio.

As Director of Workers' Compensation, she helps staff to understand workers’ compensation and how best to facilitate relationships with the workers’ compensation community. Prior to this role, she was the director of admissions at Shepherd Center.

The podcast discusses options for patients who need a “tune up,” those who never participated in rehabilitation, or injured workers who have previously participated in rehabilitation and are more than six months post-injury. 

For more information about workers' compensation admissions, visit the Shepherd Center Website.

Shepherd Center, which treats patients from around the nation and throughout the world, provides more than 20 programs and services that are not reimbursed by insurance providers, but are integral to the successful recovery and community reintegration of patients. This level of excellence is possible only through the generous support of donors.

The Shepherd Center Foundation has just published its 2015 annual report to thank donors and keep them informed about the ways in which their gifts help the hospital to continue “restoring hope and rebuilding lives.” The report is available here as a PDF download. You may also download it from the link above.

The brief, easy-to-read annual report includes graphics showing patient admissions statistics, bullet points highlighting activities of the donor-funded recreation therapy program, an update on the hospital’s capital campaigns and the renovation and expansion projects they are funding, a fundraising and giving graphic, and a chart summarizing Shepherd Center’s financial and operating numbers.

For more information on giving to Shepherd Center, visit give.shepherd.org.

“It’s an interesting part of Shepherd Center’s history,” says Mitch Fillhaber, senior vice president of corporate development and managed care. “We’ve had to keep up with the expansion of our facility and stay responsive to changes in the health marketplace.”

Today, many hospitals that refer patients to Shepherd Center see the facility as an invaluable resource for rehabilitation for people with spinal cord injury (SCI) and acquired brain injury (ABI). Efforts to streamline the hospital’s admissions process have enabled quicker initial evaluations of prospective patients. Meanwhile, Shepherd Center has become more responsive to the urgency in trauma centers to move patients to the next level of care. The most recent expansion of Shepherd from 120 beds in 2008 to 152 currently, has been a big motivator for these changes.

Expanding Its Geographic Reach

Shepherd Center relies on patient referrals submitted by other hospitals. But, increasingly, inpatient rehabilitation programs are either embedded as units in trauma hospitals or located across the street from one, Fillhaber explains.

“It means admissions considerations are principally local,” he says. “The challenge for us has been how to cast a wider net and educate referring hospitals about catastrophic injuries and the specialized expertise and equipment that’s needed for rehabilitation.”

In 1990, roughly 80 percent of admissions to Shepherd Center were from cases within Georgia. The hospital’s efforts to increase visibility regionally began in the mid-1990s and involved placing admissions liaisons outside of Atlanta. Their locations were based on referral patterns. This gave Shepherd Center feet on the ground and also cut down on travel and response time. The goal has been to unburden referring hospitals and give patients – often in the prime of their lives – greater access to aggressive, cutting-edge rehabilitation.

Research shows the sooner someone with SCI or ABI gets to rehabilitation, the better their functional outcomes, says Heddi Silon, the former director of admissions at Shepherd Center who now directs the Workers' Compensation referral program.

All told, efforts to strategically place case managers outside of Atlanta seem to be helping. Today, half of all cases admit from out-of-state, and some are international.

Giving a Face to Shepherd Center Beyond State Lines

Fourteen access care managers (ACMs) as they are called, are now working in the field for Shepherd Center; some have multi-state responsibilities. For example, one ACM in Pittsburgh covers western Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic states.

“They’ve really become an extension of our inpatient staff,” Silon says. “They have a wealth of knowledge and are often the first person to describe the injury in detail to the family and provide an accurate picture of what they might be capable of and the goals of rehabilitation.”

In many ways, the ACMs are the initial face of Shepherd Center. They provide value to referring hospitals through:

• Clinical education about spinal cord and brain injuries and how to prevent secondary complications and new developments
• Enhancements in care options
• Timely evaluations and assessment of readiness for transportation
• Answering questions and reassuring family members

“They often provide a sense of hope and optimism about the future, that as horrible as this all seems right now, the patient will be on a different road once they begin rehabilitation,” Fillhaber says.

Streamlining the Process

Over the years, the admissions team has tried to improve the process overall by:

• Adding two nurses who scan all of the cases, only giving the most appropriate ones to the ACMs
• Being granted read-only access to patient records by some referring hospitals to speed processing
• Dedicating someone to do all insurance pre-certifications
• Talking about discharge planning up front to make sure the strides made during rehabilitation can be reasonably sustained
• Providing tools, for example, online education and a virtual tour of the hospital for families who are considering Shepherd, but are unable to visit in person

But for every one admission, three or four people do not meet the criteria to admit to Shepherd Center. For example, they may have insufficient insurance coverage or may not be ready to take part in three hours of aggressive rehabilitation therapy every day.

“These are complicated cases, and we have to remind people that the average age of our patients is 32 years old,” says Julie Leighton, clinical access manager. “We don’t want to set someone up for failure.”

She and the team also aim to provide answers quickly. The goal is to evaluate a patient within 24 hours of referral, but it can vary based on the patient’s health status and if surgeries are needed.

“In the past, it could have taken a week to figure out if someone wasn’t appropriate, which can be nerve-racking for families,” Fillhaber says. “Now, it’s usually a matter of days.”

For more information, visit shepherd.org/admissions.

Written by Amanda Crowe, MA, MPH