If he is in rehab just to get his strength back, I would request him be discharged to home with PT/OT coming to your home. I so wish I had done this with my Mom.
She had Dementia and after 14 days they inform me she hadn't done well because her Dementia kept her from being able to take instruction or remember the exercises from day to day. I was also told she would not be able to walk unassisted. Got her back to tbe AL and within 24 hrs she was walking all over with her walker. I should just have had PT in the AL.
If you are not pleased with the rehab facility, find another one you are pleased with and have the admissions director (at the new facility) coordinate his release from rehab #1 and his admittance into rehab #2 via Medicare authorizations.
He is at a rehab center. Is he not getting PT and OT? If he was sent there for PT and OT he should be getting it. What about the facility are you not pleased with? You can get him transferred to another if it is a problem with the particular facility. If this is rehab that he can do at home with PT and OT that come to the house this should be discussed with the doctor that ordered rehab. the doctor can order home PT and OT. But the big question is....Other than saying he fell and was in the hospital for a week you do not indicate he has any health problems. so .... Is he safe at home? Can you care for him at home? If the answer to both of those is yes then there should not be a problem doing home rehab or taking him to an out patient rehab facility.
Are you saying he is not getting OT and PT? I would ask why he wasn't. Medicare pays the first 20 days 100%. The rehab has to start DHs PT or Medicare will not pay and he should be discharged.
Is your husband turning down PT? Are there people visiting when the Therapist comes? This happened to my Aunt, because someone was visiting the the therapist chose to go onto another patient. She didn't have PT for 3 days. Their excuse was someone was always visiting. They tried this with Mom and I told them they scheduled her for PT, take her. Yes, it was before COVID.
I don't think those rehab centers are good for people. A study done by MIT researchers found that odds of dying were highest for patients discharged from a hospital to a rehab center compared to the two main alternatives: 1) going home and having visiting specialists supervise physical therapy or 2) remaining in the hospital if the hospital has a in-house rehab department.
My sister took the advice of a large university hospital's discharge planner in a similar situation. My father was forced to spend a few weeks essentially lying in bed and my mother, 79, had to get a ride every day to visit him in his shared room unless I was in town, which I was as much as possible.
I saw the discharge documents that the hospital sent with him to the rehab. Under reason for transfer, nothing was written. A neurologist who happened to be one of the patent-holders for a drug called Nuedexta had prescribed it while my father was in the hospital. On the discharge papers, it said it was for "emotional liability." It is not for that. It is for a rare condition my father did not and does not have called pseudobulbar affect, defined as "Inappropriate involuntary laughing and crying due to a nervous system disorder."
So he was on that drug, and it made him delusional. I thought he was joking at first when I had lunch with him at the rehab. He told me he and another man were doctors helping to take care of other patients. He was still saying strange things when he got home.
Despite any daily rehab he might have undergone, he was still mostly confined to bed the whole time since the fall. His legs, which I could detect the shape of through the old jeans he was wearing, looked like bone and sinew. Old people experience muscle atrophy much faster than we do. There is nothing worse than bed rest for the elderly; if you search for "bed rest" and elderly on scholar.google.com or pubmed.gov you will see that a great deal of research supports that statement.
When my father got home he soon semi-fell again, and although he was fine, an obnoxious "aging life care manager" (hired by my sister using POA, incompetent and divisive, and whom my parents had just fired) was at their home (refusing to believe my parents had faxed a letter to her agency to tell them she was fired the day before, stating incorrectly that only my sister could fire her) and called 911. When the fire department paramedics arrived, it was clear that they were on a mission to make him go to the hospital no matter what. They finally said that he was not oriented to time and place, but he had told them his name, where he was, why they were there. He was not at all impaired. Their "not oriented" claim was because he din't know the date. Why should be? They had just said to me, right in front of my father, "You know he has Alzheimer's, right?" My dad bellowed "Alzheimer's???" and I said I did not know that and that instead he had been on a drug that caused cognitive impairment.
So they hauled him off and after a week he hospital pulled their stunt and the rehab stay was even longer. By the time he was let out 30 days later, he could not stand or walk. For some reason, he didn't become a wheelchair user. With a walker and help from a male live-in (who, endorsed and referred by a "domestic referral agency," was a bundle of treachery and unqualified fraud), my dad sort of kept walking.
Back to rehab centers, which I see as mostly a racket: I just heard Dr. Robert Malone interviewed by someone named Steve Cotrell. I found the interview on bitchute.com. Though Dr. Malone has been in the news lately because of his controversial statements about a medical intervention, for some reason the topic of post-acute care came up. Dr, Malone said, as side remark, that hospitals send frail patients to rehab/post-acute facilities so the hospital won't be penalized by CMS (Medicare) as they normally are if patients die or are readmitted within 30 days. There was a kickback scheme at my dad's hospital, too.
Most do. The hospital gets a fee from the rehab for referring the patient there. If there is a return to the hospital from rehab (or even a NH), the hospital will contact them first, before loved ones.
6 Answers
Helpful Newest
First Oldest
First
She had Dementia and after 14 days they inform me she hadn't done well because her Dementia kept her from being able to take instruction or remember the exercises from day to day. I was also told she would not be able to walk unassisted. Got her back to tbe AL and within 24 hrs she was walking all over with her walker. I should just have had PT in the AL.
ADVERTISEMENT
Is he not getting PT and OT?
If he was sent there for PT and OT he should be getting it.
What about the facility are you not pleased with?
You can get him transferred to another if it is a problem with the particular facility.
If this is rehab that he can do at home with PT and OT that come to the house this should be discussed with the doctor that ordered rehab. the doctor can order home PT and OT.
But the big question is....Other than saying he fell and was in the hospital for a week you do not indicate he has any health problems. so ....
Is he safe at home?
Can you care for him at home?
If the answer to both of those is yes then there should not be a problem doing home rehab or taking him to an out patient rehab facility.
Is your husband turning down PT? Are there people visiting when the Therapist comes? This happened to my Aunt, because someone was visiting the the therapist chose to go onto another patient. She didn't have PT for 3 days. Their excuse was someone was always visiting. They tried this with Mom and I told them they scheduled her for PT, take her. Yes, it was before COVID.
My sister took the advice of a large university hospital's discharge planner in a similar situation. My father was forced to spend a few weeks essentially lying in bed and my mother, 79, had to get a ride every day to visit him in his shared room unless I was in town, which I was as much as possible.
I saw the discharge documents that the hospital sent with him to the rehab. Under reason for transfer, nothing was written. A neurologist who happened to be one of the patent-holders for a drug called Nuedexta had prescribed it while my father was in the hospital. On the discharge papers, it said it was for "emotional liability." It is not for that. It is for a rare condition my father did not and does not have called pseudobulbar affect, defined as "Inappropriate involuntary laughing and crying due to a nervous system disorder."
So he was on that drug, and it made him delusional. I thought he was joking at first when I had lunch with him at the rehab. He told me he and another man were doctors helping to take care of other patients. He was still saying strange things when he got home.
Despite any daily rehab he might have undergone, he was still mostly confined to bed the whole time since the fall. His legs, which I could detect the shape of through the old jeans he was wearing, looked like bone and sinew. Old people experience muscle atrophy much faster than we do. There is nothing worse than bed rest for the elderly; if you search for "bed rest" and elderly on scholar.google.com or pubmed.gov you will see that a great deal of research supports that statement.
When my father got home he soon semi-fell again, and although he was fine, an obnoxious "aging life care manager" (hired by my sister using POA, incompetent and divisive, and whom my parents had just fired) was at their home (refusing to believe my parents had faxed a letter to her agency to tell them she was fired the day before, stating incorrectly that only my sister could fire her) and called 911. When the fire department paramedics arrived, it was clear that they were on a mission to make him go to the hospital no matter what. They finally said that he was not oriented to time and place, but he had told them his name, where he was, why they were there. He was not at all impaired. Their "not oriented" claim was because he din't know the date. Why should be? They had just said to me, right in front of my father, "You know he has Alzheimer's, right?" My dad bellowed "Alzheimer's???" and I said I did not know that and that instead he had been on a drug that caused cognitive impairment.
So they hauled him off and after a week he hospital pulled their stunt and the rehab stay was even longer. By the time he was let out 30 days later, he could not stand or walk. For some reason, he didn't become a wheelchair user. With a walker and help from a male live-in (who, endorsed and referred by a "domestic referral agency," was a bundle of treachery and unqualified fraud), my dad sort of kept walking.
Back to rehab centers, which I see as mostly a racket: I just heard Dr. Robert Malone interviewed by someone named Steve Cotrell. I found the interview on bitchute.com. Though Dr. Malone has been in the news lately because of his controversial statements about a medical intervention, for some reason the topic of post-acute care came up. Dr, Malone said, as side remark, that hospitals send frail patients to rehab/post-acute facilities so the hospital won't be penalized by CMS (Medicare) as they normally are if patients die or are readmitted within 30 days. There was a kickback scheme at my dad's hospital, too.
Do you have a better rehab that you'd like to transfer him to?