Rehabilitation hospital closures

[tomorrowDoc]

I'm a M3 who has been exploring different specialties, with PM&R being one of them. I was looking up some news about the field and came across a few articles about rehab hospitals closing. If you just google "rehabilitation hospital closures" you can find at least a handful of inpatient rehab hospitals or units closing in the past 3-5 years. I'm not sure if this trend is more significant than the general hospital or other specialty unit closures. But I did want to ask people to see what they thought about this. Is the trend to do more outpatient practices? Thanks.

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[bizdr]

Without knowing any facts, this doesn't make sense to me. We have more people than ever, who are living longer with more ailments, getting surgeries later in life. So many of them are just too sick to go home after their hospital stay. Medicare pays for rehab stays, so there is a lot of $ to be made. One of my friends specialized in hips/knees for complicated patients. I am sure many of these will need a rehab stay.

 

[DMBandFan86]

they send more acute patients to IPR as you have to also justify 'daily' physician visits/management of a patients medical problems. Hip replacement patients have to meet certain medicare requirements to qualify (weight, age, etc). Knees replacements don't generally go to IPR anymore.