Four licensed physical therapists

You'll know your therapist by name.

Baseline is deliberately small. Four licensed physical therapists, each with a caseload capped at nine patients a day, working out of six treatment rooms on SE Hawthorne. Nobody here runs three patients at once, because the building isn't set up to allow it.

Marguerite Hale Adaeze Okafor Tomas Ruiz Priyanka Venkat How we practise The facility

Founder

Marguerite Hale, DPT

Post-surgical rehab · Knee & return-to-sport testing

Marguerite spent eleven years in a hospital outpatient department before opening Baseline in 2014. She left because the schedule there had therapists overlapping three patients an hour, and no amount of good intention makes that good care. The clinic she built has six rooms and four therapists on purpose — you cannot double-book what doesn't exist.

She runs our return-to-sport testing protocol and takes most of the post-surgical caseload, particularly ACL and total knee. If a surgeon's office in southeast Portland has sent you here, it's usually because they've read one of her progress notes before.

At Baseline since: 2014 — founder
Sees patients: Mon–Thu, 7am–5pm
Focus: ACL, total knee, hop testing

Adaeze Okafor, physical therapist at Baseline, photographed against a dark grey backdrop.

Senior physical therapist

Adaeze Okafor, DPT

Pelvic health · Perinatal & postpartum care

Adaeze is board-certified in women's health physical therapy and joined Baseline in 2017 to build out the pelvic-health service, which now accounts for roughly a fifth of the clinic's caseload. She sees patients in the private room off the east corridor — a door that locks, gowns available, and no shared floor space.

Her standing position on internal assessment is that it's offered and never assumed. Plenty of patients get where they need to go without one, and declining doesn't change your plan of care. She also runs the postpartum return-to-running pathway, which is where a lot of her patients actually finish.

At Baseline since: 2017
Sees patients: Tue–Fri, 8am–6pm
Focus: Perinatal, continence, pelvic pain

Physical therapist

Tomas Ruiz, DPT

Sports rehab · Running & tendon loading

Tomas ran distance at collegiate level and picked up most of the injuries in the catalogue doing it, which is a qualification of a sort. He handles the sports caseload — hamstrings, ankles, Achilles and patellar tendons — and runs the Tuesday-evening runners' clinic with treadmill video gait analysis.

He is also the therapist most likely to tell you your training plan is the problem rather than your calf. Patients tend to find this annoying in week one and useful by week six.

At Baseline since: 2019
Sees patients: Mon–Thu, 10am–7pm
Focus: Running gait, tendinopathy

A seated resistance-band class in progress: older adults raising coloured therapy bands overhead while an instructor demonstrates from the front.

Physical therapist · Pictured: her Wednesday balance class

Priyanka Venkat, DPT

Chronic pain · Balance, vestibular & geriatric care

Priyanka joined in 2021 from a community rehabilitation service and carries the chronic-pain and balance caseload. She leads the small-group balance class on Wednesday and Friday mornings — eight patients at a time, therapist-led, and one of the few things at Baseline that isn't one-to-one.

She scores balance formally at the evaluation and again at discharge, so improvement is documented rather than felt. For persistent pain she is blunt about timelines: if sixteen sessions haven't moved the numbers, she says so and refers on rather than extending the plan.

At Baseline since: 2021
Sees patients: Mon, Wed–Fri, 7am–4pm
Focus: Persistent pain, falls, vestibular

How we practise

Four rules we wrote down in 2014.

These are on the wall in the back office and in every therapist's contract. They're the reason the clinic is the size it is, and the reason we turn down a fair amount of work.

Rule 01

One therapist, one patient, one hour

No aide running your exercises while your therapist is in the next room. It halves how many patients we can see in a day, and it's the whole reason the clinic works.

Rule 02

Measure it, or don't claim it

Range of motion in degrees, strength in kilograms, balance on a validated scale. Baseline at visit one, re-tested every third visit, printed side by side so you can see it yourself.

Rule 03

Discharge criteria written on day one

The numbers you need to hit before we stop go in the plan of care at the evaluation, so they can't quietly drift later. When you hit them, we discharge you.

Rule 04

Say when it isn't working

Around one in fourteen evaluations ends with a referral out rather than a course of care. If we're not the right people for your problem, you'll hear it in the first hour.

An open, daylit movement studio with mats, blocks and folded towels laid out on a grey floor. — **Movement floor** — 1,900 sq ft, opened after the 2019 expansion into the adjoining unit. Daylit on two sides.

The facility

1420 SE Hawthorne, ground floor.

The clinic occupies the ground floor of a converted 1920s commercial building: six private treatment rooms along the east corridor, a 1,900 sq ft movement floor added in 2019, and a front desk that answers its own phone during opening hours.

Step-free access from the street, with an accessible restroom and a 34-inch doorway to every room.
Four marked parking bays behind the building, plus metered street parking on Hawthorne.
Force plates and hand-held dynamometers on the movement floor, so symmetry numbers are measured rather than estimated.
Changing room and showers — useful if you're coming straight from work or heading out for a run afterwards.

Hours, parking and getting here

Close view of a therapist's hands supporting a patient's forearm as she grips a red foam bar for wrist strengthening. — **Loaded grip retraining** — tennis elbow protocol, week 3 of 8. Held isometrics at 45 seconds.

Working at Baseline

We hire roughly once every two years.

Therapists here carry nine patients a day, not sixteen, and get four paid hours a month for case review and continuing education. It is a slower job than most outpatient roles and it pays about the same, which is a trade we're upfront about.

We don't run a general applications inbox — when a role opens it's posted on this page and on the state association job board. If that's the kind of clinic you want to work in, write to the front desk and we'll keep your note on file.

Write to frontdesk@baselinerehab.example

Book an appointment

Move well again, on a measured plan.

Evaluations are booked within five working days, and there are usually two same-week slots held back for acute injuries. Tell us what happened and we'll find you an hour.

Book an appointment See what we treat

1420 SE HAWTHORNE BLVD, PORTLAND, OR 97214 · MON–THU 7AM–7PM · FRI 7AM–4PM