A question about recovery: can people work hard on evenings and weekends, yet return home sooner?
Most rehab facilities only offer services from Monday to Friday. This means that inpatients often spend their weekends without participating in therapy. This may also force patients at acute care hospitals to wait for admission to a rehab facility.
In both cases, patients are not actively moving towards returning home.
This year, St. John's Rehab expanded our rehab services to seven days per week - offering inpatient therapy, admissions and discharges on the weekends. Outpatient service hours were also extended to allow us to care for patients sooner after their return home.
We're confident this change improves the efficiency of the healthcare system, and now a research study is measuring the results.
Researchers are exploring seven-day-per-week rehabilitation for patients recovering from total hip or knee replacements. The study looks at whether this approach improves patients' level of independence and function, as measured by the industry-standard Functional Independence Measure. We're also looking at whether these patients achieve the same excellent outcomes while staying at the hospital for a shorter time.
"[This] could facilitate the patient's earlier return to the community, reduce waiting times for inpatient care, and help acute care hospital partners free up space in their inpatient units and emergency rooms," explains Marie Disotto-Monastero, Occupational Therapist, Manager of Clinical Informatics, and the principal researcher for the study.
This project could serve as a model for provincial healthcare policy.