BEVERLY — A year ago, Dr. Carl Johnson, a Boxford resident, abandoned his regular physician's office to become full-time medical director of Ledgewood Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Home in Beverly.

Now he's got an award recognizing some of the changes he's made, not only in the past year but in the past decade when he served there in a part time capacity.

"During that time and under Dr. Johnson's leadership, Ledgewood has evolved from a traditional long-term care facility to a state-of-the-art short-term rehabilitation and skilled nursing center," Manchester said.

Johnson has completely revamped how the facility cares for diabetic patients. Where patients used to get regular testing followed by short-term shots of insulin, Johnson researched what worked elsewhere and discovered that adjusting long-term doses of insulin was a better solution. That way, patients aren't out of balance six hours later when the short-term shot wears off, he said.

"The people get better diabetes control," he said. "It works."

Johnson is the only doctor working full time at Ledgewood. The facility near Beverly Hospital splits its 123 beds among rehab patients, such as those recovering from a car accident or a hip replacement, and those needing a short-term nursing home setting.

These days, it's not unusual for a dozen patients to be busy in the new rehab gym. Johnson said he's glad he gets to know most of the patients, even though they're typically there for about two weeks at a time.

"Now I'm here all along; patients can see me daily if they need to. It's not just a person on a phone," he said.

Johnson said he's now fine-tuning the cardiology program.

His wife and two sons were instrumental, he said, in pushing him to experiment with a Wii system, using virtual computer games as therapy to help people recover from injuries and illnesses.

"This is not a job you'd want right out of a residency," said Johnson, 57. "In a sense, it takes a lot of the best things from the private practice and from the hospital. The whole universe of internal medicine is here."