Having the resources to help patients regain basic functionality while recovering from injury, illness, disease or treatment is an absolutely essential hospital service. If patients aren’t receiving the rehabilitation and recovery assistance they need while under a hospital’s care, it not only decreases patient satisfaction and outcomes, but it can lead to costly readmissions and other administrative difficulties.
This is the role of rehabilitation management for hospitals — to provide consistent physical therapy and rehabilitation for patients on an inpatient basis while coordinating with physicians, nurses and other medical professionals to ensure continuity of care.
While having rehabilitation management services at a facility is necessary, hospital administrators and executives know it can also be costly. This is especially true in small- to medium-sized hospitals serving suburban and rural areas, but it can also be true of larger, high-volume facilities. Unfortunately, while it is true that rehabilitation management is important for quality patient outcomes, it can also be one of the first units dubbed nonessential when it’s time for budgetary talks.