To the original question: I would caution against a program too heavy in medical management of rehab patients. During my residency, I rotated through community, tertiary care, county and VA settings.
During community inpt rotations I spent alot of time calling the ambulance (Cardiac pts going in and out of V-tach, pts with flash pulmonary edema, acute GI bleeds, septic/tachy TBI patients on Imipenem). As a freestanding for profit facility, of course the beds were always full of sick patients.
In the tertiary care setting I spent alot of time putting in orders, reporting to and arranging for diagnostic testing for the various consultants (Renal, Neurosurg, ID, Endocrine, Rheum, Transplant, Plastics, etc.)
During the county rotations, some of the patients would be admitted then transferred straight to the ICU (do not stop at GO).
Of course, patients in these situations are too ill to tolerate 3 hours of therapy per day. Spending the bulk of your time managing medical issues is an inefficient use of your residency (remember, rehab units generally do not have monitored beds or good acute care nurses and generally discourage hanging drips so you can't really sharpen your IM skills a whole lot). The time spent in these endevours directly takes away from time that could be spent training in PM&R i.e. planning therapeutic interventions, interacting with therapists in the PT gym, observing pts during PT/OT/speech, etc.
Though Medicine residents may be annoyed by your consults during training, in private practice, no one going to be pissed at you for consulting them (they're usually grateful for the business).
If you're really into IM, go to a combined program. Otherwise, you may be sacrificing valuable PM&R training time becoming a highly qualified intern.
