Important Criteria to Consider When Choosing a Brain Injury Rehabilitation Center

1. Is the center’s goal to promote lifelong restoration?

The goal of the rehabilitation center should be to develop a home-based, life-long restoration rehabilitation program tailored to each patient.

2. Does the center have an onsite physician?

The rehabilitation center should have physician oversight and onsite physician presence to integrate rehabilitation medicine with therapy. Physical, occupational, and speech therapy, along with simultaneous rehabilitative medical management, optimizes recovery.

3. Does the center have experienced physical, occupational, and speech therapists?

The rehabilitation center should include the use of highly trained, certified physical, occupational, and speech therapists with multiple years of experience treating individuals with brain injury.

4. Does the center provide one-to-one therapies?

The rehabilitation center should provide a one-to-one ratio of therapists to clients. Therapists should work directly with the individual patient during all scheduled therapy times, to maximize the benefits of therapy and ensure proper therapeutic techniques are followed.

5. Does the center offer multiple, integrated therapy modalities?

The rehabilitation program should include an experienced interdisciplinary team that includes licensed therapists, physicians, neuropsychologists, nurses, nurse care managers, social workers, and other highly trained health professionals who are able to recognize, and appropriately treat, concerns and problems that may arise.

6. Are important diagnostic services available and accessible?

The rehabilitation center should offer access to services and assessments that help ensure the safe provision of therapy,

7. Does the center track and publish their patient outcomes?

The rehabilitation center should have a process for tracking multiple outcome measures that contribute to a national database. Tracking outcomes not only allows individuals to understand their quantitative recovery, but also contributes to the science of restoration therapy at a national level.

8. Are care, schedules and appointments coordinated for the patient?

The rehabilitation center should have an active patient/customer relationship program to ensure that treatment is seamless and that patients have continuity of care and communication across a lifetime.

9. Does the center accept Medicaid and Medicare?

The rehabilitation center should accept federal Medicare, state Medicaid, and commercial insurance. Contracts with these programs indicate that the program has met the requirements for a national standard of care.