Types of Healthcare Institutions You May Encounter After SCI
Acute Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility
An acute inpatient rehabilitation facility is a separate rehabilitation hospital or rehabilitation unit in acute care hospitals that provide intensive rehabilitation. People who go there must be able to do three hours of intense rehabilitation per day.
Long Term Acute Care Hospital
A long-term acute care (LTAC) facility is a specialty-care hospital for individuals with serious medical problems requiring intense, specialized treatment for an extended period of time—usually 20 to 30 days. These facilities provide more individualized and resource-intensive care than a skilled nursing facility, nursing home, or acute rehabilitation facility. Sometimes individuals with SCI go to an LTAC to address a longer-term medical need that prevents them from participating in intensive rehabilitation. This can include weaning from a ventilator, or healing a pressure injury.
Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF)
A skilled nursing facility is a place where people stay temporarily while getting medically necessary rehabilitation treatment. The therapy here isn’t as intensive or as often compared to those in acute inpatient rehabilitation facilities. If someone can’t go through three hours of intensive therapy, they might go to a SNF instead. Sometimes, after people finish acute inpatient rehabilitation, they are sent to SNF for more therapy. People often get SNFs and nursing homes mixed up. SNF is a temporary place to stay, a nursing home is a permanent living place for people in need of care.
Transitions Within and Between Healthcare Institutions
People with spinal cord injury (SCI) and their support persons often have to move between different kinds of hospitals and care places. For example, right after an accident, someone with SCI might go to: emergency department, intensive care unit, acute inpatient rehabilitation center, skilled nursing facility, or long term acute care hospital. Sometimes, a person might even go back and forth between some of these places because of their health changes or need for different kinds of care.
Navigating SCI
A Word About
Transitions
Getting medical help and therapy after a spinal cord injury (SCI) can be complex. It’s important that all the hospitals and care places talk to each other as someone moves from one place to another, but sometimes, things get missed along the way. It’s important to know that usually, the only people who know everything that’s going on are the person with SCI and their support person. Because of this, you need to be ready to ask questions and check on things when you move to a new care place. Ask questions about who will be following up on what, how should things work here, and what’s the best way to make smooth transitions. It’s important for people with SCI and their families not to just assume that everyone knows everything. Be ready to check on instructions and ask questions if something doesn’t seem right.
A Word About
Insurance
Health insurance can be a big factor when it comes to getting care after SCI. It’s good to have a strong understanding of what the insurance helps pay for. If you're not sure, you can look in your insurance book or call your insurance company to ask questions. If you don't have insurance, sometimes the first hospital that helps you might sign you up for a program called Medicaid. No matter if you have private insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, or other kinds of insurance, it's super important to know: what your insurance pays for, if your insurance will keep paying for things after the SCI, and if your insurance will pay for SCI specialized hospitals or doctors. If the best specialized doctors or hospitals aren't covered by your insurance network, you might be able to ask your insurance company for out of network services.