Managing Recovery: 4 Reasons to Choose Inpatient Care

Managing your recovery after a serious medical incident—stroke, heart attack, surgery or injury from a fall or auto accident, for example—can be a complicated and confusing endeavor. Among the many choices you will be asked to make as you begin to recover is what comes next for you when it is time to be discharged from the hospital. In most cases, the next step will be rehabilitation therapy, and your basic options for pursuing that care will include both outpatient and inpatient short term rehab programs. 

Here are 4 reasons to choose inpatient care over outpatient care:

Easier recovery management

Choosing inpatient short term rehab provides you with professional help in managing the many details of recovery. During your stay, you won't have to worry about things like wound care, medication management, meal preparation and cleanup, or getting yourself out to therapy appointments and/or medical follow-ups, among the many other day-to-day tasks that would need your attention in an outpatient rehab program. Taking the burden of these day-to-day issues off your shoulders will leave you with much less daily stress, allowing you to focus all of your time and energy on healing.

Comprehensive, highly coordinated and efficient care

Enrolling in a good inpatient short term rehab program for your rehabilitative therapy means that your treatment and care will be planned with and administered by a physician-led, multidisciplinary team of rehabilitation specialists. This team approach ensures that you receive care that accommodates all of your recovery needs—from head to toe—via a comprehensive, individualized treatment plan.

Since all of your recovery needs will be served by that team, all under one roof, efficient communication between the various team members will be assured, which leads to seamless coordination of all aspects of your care. In other words, you won't have to deal with the "one hand doesn't know what the other is doing" hassles that can occur with outpatient care, where you're likely to work with a number of therapists and other professionals in separate offices.

Faster, more complete recovery

Inpatient short term rehab programs provide a level of care that outpatient programs lack. Along with the more comprehensive, coordinated and efficient care mentioned above, inpatient rehab is also able to provide more intensive rehabilitation therapy. Typically, individuals in outpatient programs will see therapists for 30 minutes to an hour anywhere from one to three times a week. In an inpatient short term rehab, on the other hand, each patient is provided with a minimum of 3 hours of therapy daily. Additionally, inpatient programs tend to have more and better rehabilitation equipment and facilities than the average outpatient program, and patients have the advantage of much greater access to these resources. These and other factors are why attending an inpatient short term rehab can promote faster, more complete recovery results than outpatient rehabilitative treatment can.

Safety

Hospitals stays are shorter than they used to be years ago, and many people are discharged before they feel confident in their ability to care for themselves at home. If this is the case for you, choosing inpatient short term rehab for your rehabilitation needs can provide you with a much-needed buffer between hospital and home, giving you the recovery time and treatment you need to feel well-prepared, safe and confident when it's time to go home and get back to your life.