Facilities of early rehabilitation after stroke in Poland 2010

The aim of this work was to survey the contemporary facilities for early poststroke rehabilitation in Poland. The main research questions were as follows: what is the availability of inpatient rehabilitation for poststroke patients in neurological departments and in rehabilitation departments? The growing costs of healthcare are encouraging healthcare planners to look for new organizational solutions of services that could enable rehabilitation as early as possible after disease onset. Early poststroke rehabilitation includes many elements that provide for early-onset rehabilitation and its continuation after discharge from the stroke unit. Two questionnaires evaluating neurorehabilitation of individuals who had stroke were designed and distributed: the first questionnaire was distributed to 221 neurological wards and the second questionnaire was distributed to 154 rehabilitation departments in Poland. We obtained information about delay before admission from neurological wards to rehabilitation departments, the number of sessions per day, the time duration of one session, the number of sessions per week, the average length of stay in department, the methods of outcome measurement, etc. We sent out 375 questionnaires and received 129 (35%) responses, 78 from neurological wards and 51 from rehabilitation departments. Only 25% of all patients were moved from neurological wards to the rehabilitation department after stroke (15% directly). Of those moved to rehabilitation departments, only 54% were treated early after stroke; that is, within 3 months of stroke. Considering that about half of stroke survivors will require rehabilitation (30 days after stroke onset), the current facilities of early poststroke rehabilitation in Poland cannot meet this need. We should do our best to introduce rehabilitation services such as early home-supported discharge after stroke, which is currently not available in Poland. Although we have focused on resources in Poland, we anticipate that similar patterns may be found in other countries in the region.