SBA winner Sharon Gutwin and the RehabGYM

A visitor might initially regard the RehabGym in Colchester as a typical training facility. It's got all the usual exercise machines along with the requisite studio for yoga and Pilates classes. There's also a pair of small heated pools, one with a current to allow simulated lap swimming.

Closer inspection, however, reveals some distinctive details. Lockers are made of wood rather than metal, for example, and a motorized lift-and-pulley system in the pool area gives a person in a wheelchair independent access to an adjoining bathroom and changing room. There's also a separate kids' and families' gym that includes a child-size treadmill and a bench press with weights made of brightly colored Styrofoam. Sunlight streaming through skylights and wall-height windows gives all the spaces a cheerful appearance.

"I wanted to create a nurturing environment, to make it feel like a house," says Sharon Gutwin, the founder and owner of the RehabGym. Her model is the sort of friendly environment depicted on the long-running television series "Cheers." The objective, Gutwin says, is "to lure people to it and to keep them coming back."

She designed the interior in accordance with what she had learned from listening to physical-therapy patients for 25 years.

"I got to hear what people wanted and what they were disappointed with and why so many of them chose to do their exercises at home," Gutwin says.

It's her innovative combination of fitness and injury recovery that accounts in part for the selection of Gutwin as the Vermont Small Business Person of the Year. The award will be conferred at a ceremony in Burlington's Waterfront Park on June 4.

The US Small Business Administration also recognized Gutwin's successful management of a company she started five years ago in a 4,200-square-foot leased space in Williston. The RehabGym's payroll increased during that period from $63,000 to $800,000 as the number of employees rose from 2 to 26. To accommodate a corresponding growth in clients, she opened the 11,800-square-foot Colchester site last November as a complement to the Williston facility.

Gutwin is likewise being honored for her "contributions to the community." The RehabGym strives to make its services affordable for lower-income Vermonters, the segment of the population least likely to receive insurance reimbursement for physical therapy. As Gutwin says, "those who need the care the most are those least able to afford it."

Her social conscience extends beyond Vermont's borders. Gutwin recently taught for seven weeks in Haiti as a volunteer for a South Dakota-based charitable organization that works to improve living conditions in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country. Gutwin says she wants to establish an ongoing relationship between RehabGym and a country in the developing world. Her aim is to provide technical as well as financial assistance.

The company's philosophy puts emphasis on achieving self-empowerment.

"We encourage patients to take responsibility for their problems instead of having them say, Fix what's wrong with me,'" explains Cathy Webster, a RehabGym physical therapist and a longtime colleague of Gutwin's.

Attention is paid to clients' emotional and mental health as well as to their physical well-being. Although Gutwin says there's no such thing as a typical user of the RehabGym's facilities, elderly Vermonters do account for a significant share of a business with practices well suited to their needs.

"If a person is healthy physically, they're more healthy mentally too," Gutwin notes. "Many of the elderly are depressed - partly because they're not in good condition. A lot of what we do involves emotional health along with physical health."

Tony Nowak, a loan officer with the Vermont Economic Development Authority, says the company's goal is "to bridge the gap between the medical profession and the fitness industry by providing the essential expertise connection." Nowak helped Gutwin obtain financing for the gym, and was so impressed with her vision and her achievements that he nominated her for the Small Business Administration's award.

The RehabGym's mission and methods reflect what Gutwin learned about the health care system during the years she worked at Fletcher Allen Health Care and at the Sports Orthopedic Rehabilitation Center in South Burlington.

"Health care has always been hard to access; it's mysterious; there's borders all around it," she says.

"I want to see my profession become proactive rather than reactive," Gutwin adds. That aim is derived from her larger ambition to "flip the system upside down."

As currently constituted, "medical facilities depend on our being sick, so what we have now is sick care, not health care," she observes. The ordering should be reversed, she suggests, with higher priority given to preventing illness by maintaining wellness. In the process, control of the system would pass to consumers and away from providers.

This intently argued critique comes from a soft-spoken 51-year-old woman whom some colleagues describe as shy. Wearing a red polo shirt and with a pair of sunglasses perched atop her brown hair, Gutwin was chewing gum as she was interviewed in the waiting area of the Colchester site one recent afternoon. Her thoughts came neatly bundled in sequential sets.