Patients Age: 88
Admission Date: 3/6/18
Admitted From: Hudson Valley Hospital Center
Discharge Date: 5/9/18
Discharged To: Home
Length of Stay: 64 days
Reason for Stay: Hypertension and muscle weakness
How did this patient hear about Cortlandt Healthcare? Family

Details of Experience:

Robert came to Cortlandt Healthcare from Hudson Valley Hospital Center seeking rehabilitation for his left shoulder, hip, and some general muscle strengthening. Upon admission, Robert was asked by the rehabilitation team to set short-term and long-term goals, so he can transition safely back home. Some of the short-term goals were, increasing muscle strength, maneuver from laying down to sitting up in bed, and being able to ambulate over an extended range safely. The long-term goals that were set included, perform the task of lying in bed to sitting up to then getting up and out of bed, maintain balance for a certain amount of time, ambulate at least 50 feet, and to negotiate eight regular stairs.

Robert required rehabilitation services to assess functional abilities such as, facilitate with all functional mobility, promote safety awareness, improve dynamic balance, enhance fall recovery abilities, increase functional activity tolerance, minimize falls, and decrease complaints of pain. With this being said, Robert was seen daily, six times a week for nine weeks, to ensure he would have the safest discharge back home.

The first task was to move from the lying down position to sitting up in bed without any support. Initially, Robert needed two people to assist him due to the pain in his left shoulder and some muscle weakness. However, in two short weeks, Robert was able to sit up on his own, using some support from the side rail! Next, Robert had to demonstrate safely ambulating over a certain distance with his rolling walker and safely make two turns. During Robert’s evaluation, he was unable to ambulate across any distance due to pain, but after his physical therapy and three and a half weeks later, he was able to ambulate 75 feet with his rolling walker! With more determination and hard work with our rehabilitation team, a short week later, Robert ambulated 250 feet with his rolling walker!

The next goal for Robert was to safely walk up and down eight regular stairs. Upon his evaluation, Robert was not able to go up or down any stairs. However, within four weeks of rehabilitation sessions he was able to maneuver three stairs safely, and then within an additional three weeks of sessions, Robert could go up and down 16 steps safely!

Looking back at Robert’s short-term and long-term goals he made, he successfully completed six short term goals and six long term goals all in nine weeks! Robert also commented on his stay at Cortlandt Healthcare stating, “They all do a good job. The nursing staff is very good and so are the aides. In physical therapy I can tell it is going quite well because I am feeling the changes! Everybody I come across helps me and they are all very good. They are excellent in fact; you can tell they really love their jobs!”