Study: Stroke Rehab Rates 'Below Maximal Effective Dosing'

APTA 

The Message

While it's generally accepted that rehabilitation therapy rates are relatively low in the U.S. among individuals who experience stroke, less is known about how those rates relate to multiple factors around acute and post-acute care and assessments. Authors of a new study that tracked clinical measurements among patients poststroke linked to 28 acute care hospitals believe they've shed some light on that relationship. The good news: Patients with more severe deficits tend to receive larger therapy doses. The bad news: Overall, therapy dosing is low, with 35% of patients receiving no physical therapy within the first three months of a stroke. Variation of therapy use is also wide depending on discharge location, with discharge patterns themselves varying dramatically across the hospitals studied. The big picture, according to authors, is that "therapy doses in the United States are below the maximal effective dosing and so contribute to incompletely realized functional gains in this population."

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