Reading Rehab Case

2.

The benefits of having a new system in which care delivery is organized around diagnoses or “service lines” is that you can have all of the therapists working as a team under that particular specialty. When you are dealing with a stroke victim, for example, they are going to have very specific therapy needs that include physical, occupational, and speech therapy. If you can develop a plan together this is much more beneficial to the patient than if you are getting a plan of care for the Physical Therapy Department, Occupational Therapy Department, and Speech Therapy Department. There could be great variations in the level of therapy from each department. With all the therapists working under the “Stroke” line they can coordinate efficiently the timing of their visits and the progress of the patient. Also the paperwork would be much more efficient since you would have the specialization of the three therapists charting their days activities together.

The drawbacks are the fact that patients being admitted for specific conditions can vary greatly and you will face the possibility of having a lot of idle time for therapists, for example, that are working in the “spinal cord” line when there aren’t many spinal cord injury patients admitted. You can’t send the therapists home since they are in such high demand so you will need to find ways for them to be productive. It would be interesting to see if they could possibly have rotation programs where therapists could gain specialities in more than one area so they could be shifted weekly or monthly depending on demand.