The purpose of this study was to evaluate day hospital care in rehabilitation medicine as an alternative to intensive inpatient care. The study design called for two groups of randomly selected patients who met all admission criteria for intensive inpatient rehabilitation, who had Medicare or Medicaid insurance coverage, and who had a responsible other person living in the home. Those in the day hospital group were sent home after a short period of family training and then were taken to the hospital for treatment five days a week. The control group remained in the hospital on the rehabilitation service as inpatients and received the routine care provided to all other inpatients on that service. Data on utilization of health services, both during and after rehabilitation, cost of services, medical, functional, psychologic and social outcomes were collected for all study participants and analyzed. Findings showed no essential difference between the two groups in physical or functional outcome; however at full capacity with the research costs removed, the day hospital method proved the more cost effective.

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