What do Hospital Inpatient and Outpatient Rehab Therapists Want and Need?

Ebook Provides Insights to Help Improve Outcomes, Value-Based Care and Reimbursement

Rehabilitation therapy plays a vital role in hospitals today. The expert care provided to patients by rehab therapists can mean the difference between short and long lengths of stay, between minimal and optimal reimbursement and between an efficient and inefficient department.

With all the challenges facing hospital administrators and leadership today, from staffing to revenue, rehab therapy may also be an area overlooked. It shouldn’t be. In Net Health’s latest ebook, 5 Ways to Enhance Your Hospital Therapy Operations, gain insights from rehab therapists on what they want and need to provide the outcomes and care hospitals need to meet value-based care and quality initiatives as well as operational and staffing challenges.

What Rehab Therapists Want Hospital Leadership to Know

There are several important insights to review. Today’s hospital-based Rehabilitation Therapy providers are often medical jacks of all trades. They manage care for a variety of settings and therapy departments—from outpatient physical therapy to inpatient acute care rehab. Their care influences outcomes for patients hospitalized for routine knee replacement to more acute patients learning to be more mobile after a stroke or debilitating illness.

Sometimes these skilled therapists are impacted by issues beyond their control that limit their ability to provide optimal care. 

Where’s the Patient?

For example, therapists often are sent to a room to provide therapy to a patient, and that patient is not in the room as they were moved or are getting other therapy. That wastes time and creates a cascade of scheduling issues, a challenging problem for hospitals needing to optimize efficiency when staffing is problematic.

Another common problem is that therapists spend hours manually updating caseloads in real-time when solutions could have been reached in minutes had there been better interdepartmental communication. Here are other recommendations therapists believe will help them better perform tasks while helping the hospital improve outcomes and manage costs.

• Streamline and automate workflow processes to improve communication, documentation and productivity.
• Ensure better access to patient information like patient order updates and location changes—where the patient is and what they need. When this information is integrated into the hospital information system (HIS), it provides information in real-time, improving staff efficiency and better managing time.
• Develop a more consistent communication system that makes it simpler and more time-efficient to make patient care decisions, such as transfers and discharges.

Of course, there is much more involved in improving hospital rehab therapy.  However, these tips provide an important starting point and a gateway for discussions and problem-solving.  For more insights into the challenges and solutions that can be implemented for rehab therapists, we invite you to download 5 Ways to Enhance Your Hospital Therapy Operations.