Chicago center tied to Gilbert stroke rehab takes to local radio airwaves

As Detroit billionaire businessman Dan Gilbert returned home after more than eight weeks of rehabilitation from a stroke he suffered earlier this year, he might have heard a radio commercial from a familiar source.

Airing spots last week on WWJ 950 AM was the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, considered the top center in the nation for stroke rehabilitation and believed to be where Gilbert had been recovering. The ads focus on the center’s use of cutting-edge technology to help patients get their lives back.

A spokeswoman for the Chicago center said the ads were part of a national ad campaign the AbilityLab has run since changing its name from the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and opening its $550 million research hospital in March 2017. She would not give details on when the ads started running in the Detroit market.

Still, the timing seemed curious.

Gilbert returned home Aug. 16 as he continues his recovery from the stroke suffered in late May, Quicken Loans Inc. CEO Jay Farner said in a statement. Quicken Loans has released no details on the state of his health.

Earlier this month, Gilbert appeared in a video distributed to employees of his Quicken Loans, Bedrock LLC and other companies. The video showed a thinner, bearded Gilbert sitting upright and saying he was at a rehab center in “downtown Chicago, Illinois.”

AbilityLab has ranked atop U.S. News & World Report’s list of best rehabilitation hospitals every year since 1991. It focuses on translational medicine, which puts clinicians and researchers in the same space to speed the creation of new and improved treatments.

Crain’s Detroit Business