Practice Settings
Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility (IRF)
Inpatient Rehabilitation Facilities are designed for patients who are able to tolerate an intensive regimen of therapies, require 24-hour rehabilitation nursing care, and who will likely return home or to a home-like setting after discharge. Patients can be referred from any level of care and commonly include those with stroke, brain injury, multiple trauma, amputation, spinal cord injury, orthopedic conditions, and degenerative neurological disorders, such as Parkinson's or Multiple Sclerosis.
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Medical/Surgical Therapies
Many patients in a variety of medical/surgical units can benefit from a primary care and interdisciplinary rehabilitation model. Hospitals utilize a team of physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech/language pathologists to provide services to patients within their medical/surgical units.
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Transitional Care/Skilled Nursing Units
Transitional Care/Skilled Nursing Units are for patients that may benefit from daily rehabilitative therapies but not at the intense level of an IRF. The patients also require nursing and have a need for inpatient treatment because of complications or unresolved underlying medical conditions.
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Long-Term Acute Care Hospital (LTACH)
Long-Term Acute Care Hospitals (LTACHs) are specialty care hospitals designed for patients that require an acute hospital stay beyond the typical four to seven day length of stay to address chronic medical conditions. The patients' medical needs result in no to low tolerance of functional therapeutic activities. On average, patients require a 25-day stay to progress to an IRF or transitional care/skilled nursing unit.
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Outpatient Rehabilitation
Outpatient Rehabilitation offers therapy programs for patients with physical limitations who can travel one to three times per week to receive care. These programs specialize in services for sports injuries, comprehensive occupational medicine, neurological disorders, wound care, hand and spine injuries, and post-surgical conditions.
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Home Health Rehabilitation
Home Health Rehabilitation is for home-bound patients who require assistive devices or assistance at home. Patients can receive support services such as physical, occupational, and speech therapies, instruction in disease management, self-medication, injury prevention, and wound care one to three times per week.
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Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs) – Therapy
Patients in nursing homes and assisted living environments can receive goal-oriented, individualized therapy programs for diagnoses including general debility, post-orthopedic surgery, stroke, chronic pain, and wound care. Goals may include helping residents improve strength, mobility, feeding abilities, and speech, and return to daily tasks of living with minimum discomfort and maximum productivity.
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School Settings
In a typical school setting, therapists work with children and adolescents with injuries, burns, weakness, acute or chronic pain, neurological disorders, such as cerebral palsy, post-surgical conditions, as well as communication and cognitive disorders. Therapists provide services such as small group or individual therapy, preparation of progress reports, and consultation with patients, physicians, and school staff.
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Administrative/Management
Directors and Managers of rehabilitation units typically are former therapists who have received specialized training in unit management. They are instrumental in producing successful patient outcomes and the profitability of a rehab unit. Their duties include hiring, training and supervision of staff, marketing the unit’s services to hospital departments and physicians, billing for services delivered, and creating daily and monthly reports that track the functional improvement of a unit’s patients, and the diagnostic mix and source of patients treated on the unit.
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