(Music) Welcome to this very special edition of Health
Matters right here on The Balancing Act.
It's the first in a four part series about the really
important work that is being done at inpatient rehabilitation
hospitals.
A great segment coming up.
In fact I am on location at HealthSouth, one of the premier
inpatient rehabilitation hospitals in the country with
over a hundred hospitals nation wide.
And I'm joined this morning by Dr. Dexanne Clohan, HealthSouth
Chief Medical Officer and Dr. Cheryl Miller, National Director
of Therapy Operations.
Doctor, thank you so much for being here this morning.
So happy to be here.
Thank you Dr. Miller as well.
Dr. Clohan, let me start with you.
Tell me a little bit about HealthSouth.
HealthSouth is a rehabilitation system of hospitals and I should
mention rehabilitation medicine.
It's a special area of medicine.
Doctors train in this specifically to help patients
who have lost the ability to function in various ways that
are important in their life.
And so HealthSouth is a system of 107 rehabilitation patient
hospitals, 29 states and Puerto Rico, about 1 in 5 of all the
patients in rehabilitation hospitals are in HealthSouth
sites.
They may not have the name HealthSouth prominently
displayed because in many instances we're partnering with
university hospitals, academic medical centers, or prominent
medical centers in the city.
But frequently you'll find the HealthSouth name and you'll
definitely find them all listed on the HealthSouth website.
To clarify this is not like a nursing home?
So here's a key for your audience.
Remember these words.
There's a difference between a hospital and a center or a
skilled nursing facility.
So we're rehabilitation hospitals.
You'll find RNs on duty 24 hours a day in the hospital,
physicians accessible 24 hours a day, pharmacies on site,
speciality trained nurses, therapists.
A great team.
In a skilled nursing facility, which are very appropriate for
certain patients, you'll find some therapy services, but
you'll find RNs only one shift a day is all they're required to
have.
Physicians aren't required to be available 24 hours a day so
there are quite a number of differences between those sites.
So I hope your viewers if they're ever in the position
where they need to find care for a family member his last ability
to function to ask the question is this a rehabilitation
hospital?
Ummhmm, because it gives you piece of mind to make that right
choice.
Dr. Miller, let me bring you in.
Tell me about your roll and how you're helping patients here.
My roll as a leader of therapy and HealthSouth is to make sure
that are therapy services are provided in state of the art
environments and they're also provided by competent
clinicians.
And my role specifically is related to therapy, but to make
sure our therapist have the best skills possible to provide our
patients the best care possible.
And speaking of patients, we have a video clip of one
patient.
I'd like to share that with my viewers if I may.
Great.
Let's take a look real quick.
I was paralyzed from my shoulders down when they
transported me over um there was the only thing I could move was
my head uh and I could lift my shoulders.
Other then that, um no other part of my body moved.
Ah they, I couldn't even press a call button.
Um when I got here they um gave me a new medic called Budon
where I had to blow into a tube to try to get assistance.
I could not feed myself.
I uh you know, I was totally dependent upon the nursing staff
here and techs to do take care of me and depended up the
physical therapy staff to as I say fix me, you know to get me
back from as I said to being totally umm paralyzed to a state
of some independence.
Dr. I can only imagine that quality outcomes must be so
important to you.
Is that patient experience typical?
We get alot of responses from patients that are very grateful
for the team that's worked with them.
The patients do the work themselves alot as well.
We measure patients ability to function when they arrive at our
hospital and then again when they're discharged and so
there's actually a numerical store to show how much they've
improved and we can demonstrate that they do so much better in
our hospitals that we're proud of that.
That's great and Dr. Miller, as a result of the therapy which
I'm hearing now from Dr. Clohan, what can a patient expect in
terms of the goals and gaining that independence they want so
much.
So when a patient comes into our hospital the first thing we want
to know is what their goals are.
Once we know what their goals are it can help us to identify
what we want to work on while they're here and what their
treatment is going to involve while they're here so they can
return home independent and most importantly to a more meaningful
life.
And Dr. Clohan I'm going to end with you.
It's really important what I'm hearing here.
It's very individualized and it sounds like a team here.
Most importantly the patient is really right in the middle of
that team selecting their goals, letting us know what's important
to them and working hard because rehabilitation is no easy task.
Thank you so much for your time.
Give me that website one more time.
HealthSouth.com.
God bless you both and we'll see you again in part 2 of this
great series.
Looking forward to it, thank you.
Thank you ladies and of course if you want to learn more just
go to our website that's TheBalancingAct.com
TheBalalncingAct.com.
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we always love hearing from you.
(Music)