Our strong preference is for patients to go home after joint replacement surgery. Patients who live alone, who are unable to do their activities of daily living at home are candidates to go to rehabilitation facilities. Patients who go to acute rehab facilities are limited in their stay to about 10 days. Patients who go to long-term rehab typically are patients who require long-term care. Patients who have had major revision joint replacement surgeries are patients who commonly go to rehab facilities.
As an example, patients who have had a spacer for infected joint replacement have difficulty placing weight on the affected side and their rehab facility stay could be 6 weeks or longer. These are patients who are undergoing a “staged reconstruction” for their infected joint. The first stage is the stage where the rehab stay is long. After the second surgery when the spacer is removed and revision hip replacement is performed, patients typically go home.
Insurances including Medicare typically cover the stay at rehab facilities for several days. For patients where they run out of days covered by commercial insurance or Medicare, there are other options including changing to Medicaid or alternative private insurances. Very rarely patients need to pay “out of pocket” to stay at rehabilitation facilities.