Resp Care
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Management of the patient receiving long-term ventilator care is facing many changes, among them new alternatives in placement outside hospitals. These include the home and two new options--the skilled nursing facility and the residential care facility. Government and insurance carriers are now more willing to pay for these alternatives to hospitalization. ⋯ The skilled nursing facility (SNF) has been in the past an unsafe alternative placement; however, some SNFs are developing special units for ventilator-dependent patients that will make a placement to these facilities safe and practical. Residential care facilities, developed as a model program in California, can care for small numbers of ventilator-dependent persons in a homelike setting. These new placement alternatives will make it possible for virtually all medically stable, ventilator-dependent patients to live away from the hospital.
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In the 4 1/2 years beginning in January 1981, the University Hospital at the Boston University Medical Center admitted 46 ventilator-assisted individuals to its Respiratory Care Center and discharged 38 of them to their homes with ventilators. Of the 46 admitted, 23 had COPD and 23 had neuromuscular or skeletal disorders. All the latter were successfully sent home, and 15 of the 23 with COPD went home. ⋯ The hospital-based Respiratory Care Center is staffed by a team from physical therapy, occupational therapy, respiratory therapy, rehabilitation nursing, social service, psychiatry, rehabilitation medicine, and otolaryngology. A pulmonary physician directs the program and a respiratory nurse specialist is co-director and oversees its daily operation. The rehabilitation process has six stages: Stage 1 is stabilization, Stage II is evaluation, Stage III is rehabilitation planning, Stage IV is rehabilitation training, Stage V is discharge planning.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)