Meet Maricel Bumanlag — Our 2026 Physical Therapist of the Year!

October is National Physical Therapy Month, and today we’re pleased to announce that Maricel Bumanlag has been named our 2026 Physical Therapist of the Year! Maricel was one of 20 nominees for this year’s award. To see a list of all of the nominees, please click here.

Maricel has been a PT with VNS Health for nearly 15 years and has worked in the South Bronx since 2023. Always guided by her patients’ individual goals, she values home care for its one-on-one connection.

“Home care does more than allow me to help patients restore their strength, mobility and flexibility,” says Maricel, “It allows me to restore their confidence, motivation and independence.”

Ask Maricel about her most memorable patient and she is quick to talk about Sarah*, who’d sunk into a depression after a fall and a fracture. Unable to walk, Sarah couldn’t get to her job as a teacher, and she also couldn’t do the one thing she loved most—go to Broadway shows.

That is, until Maricel came into her life. In addition to home exercises, Maricel worked with Sarah to develop a plan so she could see Broadway shows again: Step by step, they envisioned how, with the help of a close friend, Sarah would take her wheelchair, navigate public transportation and make it to a show she was eager to see.

“Really, Maricel, you think I can do it?” Sarah asked.

Maricel was confident she could, and Sarah proved her right. When Maricel came for a home visit the day after Sarah attended a show, she recalls, “I saw the glow on her face. It was beautiful. Sarah was so happy.” Just as important, Maricel added, “now she was motivated to walk and to get back to her prior life.”

Visit by visit, Maricel builds trust as she works to bridge the language barriers and relatively low levels of health literacy that are common in the South Bronx. “I adapt to my patient’s communication styles to ensure they feel safe, understood and capable of managing their own recovery,” she says. “I always speak in layman’s terms and try to understand who they are as people.”

Having worked in the South Bronx for the past several years, Maricel often sees former patients on the street and in buildings she frequents.

“They’ll say to me, ‘When you’re in the building, please knock on my door! I’ll make you a coffee,’” says Maricel. “It’s very rewarding. They may have thought at first that a physical therapist would only bring them pain. But now they think of me as this person who came to their house and brought them back to the life they had before.”

When she’s not at work, Maricel is a New Jersey “sports mom,” taking her 13-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter to basketball, tennis and swimming. Maricel and her husband, who is also a physical therapist, emphasize sports over screens, knowing the lifelong value of physical activity. “There’s so much benefit to being physically active,” she says. “For the kids, it teaches them responsibility and accountability at an early age, and it’s good for your health at any age.”

*The patient’s name has been changed for privacy.