[Implementation of acute stroke rehabilitation services in our hospital -comparison between the years 2010 and 2000-]

We retrospectively compared the stroke rehabilitation services in our hospital in 2010 with those in 2000. The severity of strokes in 2010 was worse than that in 2000. The period between the onset of stroke and beginning of physical therapy was shortened from 11.3 days to 4.0 days, and the period between prescription and beginning of physical therapy was shortened from 1.1 days to 0.2 days. We consider that two reasons for these changes were that requests to the department of rehabilitation came at earlier stages in the development of symptoms and that we could shift chronic rehabilitation services to acute rehabilitation services due to an increase in the number of physical therapists. Introducing the electronic medical record system might also have been efficient for these changes.