After Hip Replacement: 3 Questions To Ask Your Short-Term Rehab Facility
After a major surgery like a hip replacement, you need time to recover. However, you shouldn't expect to stay too long in the hospital. The average length of time a patient stays in the hospital after hip surgery is only two to four days. Some patients are ready to go home after that time, but many aren't. When you're ready to be discharged from the hospital, but not ready to take care of yourself at home, the answer is usually a short-term rehab facility where you can receive the care and physical therapy you need until you're ready to return home. There are many factors that go into choosing the right short-term rehab facility. Take a look at some questions you should ask before you decide that a facility is right for you.
Does The Facility Have Experience With Your Condition?
Some short-term care facilities take a wide variety of patients with different conditions. Others specialize in a specific kind of care, like cardiac care, stroke care, or orthopedic care. Whether you choose a specialized facility or one that takes a range of different types of patients, you should definitely choose one that has plenty of experience treating orthopedic patients generally, and hip replacement patients specifically. They should have physicians, nurses, nurse's aides, therapists, and case managers that have worked with a number of hip replacement patients previously.
Specialists are more important than you might think. Patients have different needs when recovering from different conditions, and medical professionals that are familiar with your condition will be more sensitive to your specific needs. They also may have more creative solutions to pain management or difficulties that you may have with therapy.
How Long Is The Average Stay?
Everyone's recovery is different, but the facility should be able to tell you how long the average short-term stay is. The answer may depend on what kind of short-term facility it is: for example, the average stay in a facility classified as an in-patient rehab facility is 12.4 days, while the average stay in a facility classified as a skilled nursing facility is 26.4 days. If the facility that you're considering gives you an answer that's on the high side for the type of facility it is, that could be a red flag that the care in that facility isn't up to the standard that you want.
Along the same lines, make sure to also ask what percentage of patients are sent home after rehab. This is an important point. It's normal for at least some rehab patients to be sent to a nursing home or other long-term care facility after rehab. Some may have been in long-term care even before needing rehab, and others simply may not have regained enough strength to safely live independently. But generally speaking, the lower the percentage of patients sent to long-term care after rehab, the better your chances of making a full enough recovery to be sent home yourself.
How Much Therapy Will There Be?
You're going to rehab to recover, but that doesn't necessarily mean resting. Spending too much time in bed can actually delay your recovery. Rehabilitation is work, and it's vital to get the proper amount of therapy each day. That's why you need to ask how many therapy sessions you'll receive each day, and how long those sessions will be. A common recommendation is two or three 20 to 30 minute therapy sessions each day during early recovery from hip replacement surgery.
A facility that can't promise to meet your therapy needs may be understaffed or have more patients than they can treat effectively. The staff may be wonderful and well-trained, but if they can't spend the amount of time on your therapy that you need to recover completely, then you won't recover as quickly or completely as you want to.
The right short-term care facility can have you back on your feet and back home as soon as possible. Asking the right questions can help you ensure that you find the best short-term rehab facility for you. Begin your search for a short-tern care facility by checking out a place like The Village At Morrisons Cove.
