Pamela M. Anthony
President and CEO
Restore Rehabilitation L.L.C.
Owings Mills, Maryland
Age: 49

Pamela M. Anthony started Restore Rehabilitation L.L.C. in her basement in 2006, taking out a second mortgage to pay startup costs because the bank wouldn’t give her a business loan.

The bank didn’t think a boutique business that guides more personal care for injured workers would pan out, she said.

Eleven years and a lot of work took the venture from two employees in the basement to 215 employees with two floors and 9,800 square feet of office space in Owings Mills, Maryland.

“It was scary, but I knew it would work,” Ms. Anthony said of her leap from being a nurse case manager for other companies to setting up her own case management company serving the workers compensation sector.

As a firm that contracts with insurers to help injured workers get their lives back, Ms. Anthony said it’s key to rely on staff — not contractors — and to employ people who care about what they are doing.

“They are dedicated to me and this, not 10 different companies,” she said. “That makes a difference.” The other difference, she said, is “doing something you are good at and doing it well.”

“I spent about a year and a half on a hospital floor, and I was not cut out to be a bedside nurse,” said Ms. Anthony. Case management allows her to use her medical and business skills, but she and her team also work to win the trust of injured workers so they are seen as advocates for the patients.

And Restore Rehabilitation L.L.C. is among the best, said Oscar Burgos, Pasadena, California-based senior vice president and national claims manager for Old Republic Contractors Insurance Group Inc.

“This may sound trite, but quite simply she’s a caring, business-savvy professional dedicated to the craft of medical management — not medical cost containment, but medical management,” he said. “Doing right by the injured worker is what (her business) does best.”

Ms. Anthony said Restore Rehabilitation is successful because it focuses on one aspect of workers compensation.

“I don’t think you can do everything and do it well, so pick something you like and do it really well,” she said.

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