Rehabilitation Patterns After Hospitalization: Results from a Danish Registry

Conditions that could benefit from rehabilitation contribute to 310 million years of life lived with disability. Internationally rehabilitation could be part of the solution to the growing global disease burden. This register based study wanted to explore differences in patterns of rehabilitation among patients discharged from the hospital with a rehabilitation plan, explore rehabilitation initiation, and assess the activation of rehabilitation plans within legal requirements.

The study was conducted at Odense University Hospital in the Region of Southern Denmark.

The study investigated acute contacts by utilising rehabilitation referrals, demographic and municipal data from Odense Municipality residents from 2015 to 2020.

Descriptive statistics, logistic regressions, cox regression and cumulative incidence rate were used to explore rehabilitation the activation of rehabilitation plans.

The cohort consisted of 225,653 hospital contacts. Overall, 10,327 (5%) received a rehabilitation plan. Contacts were more often female or had increased co-morbidity. Prescription increased with age and for ethnical Danes. Initiation of prescribed plans increased within the first weeks, levelling from 30 to 60 days. Delayed initiation of the rehabilitation plan beyond 30 days raised the likelihood of non-initiating altogether.

Although evidence acknowledges the benefits of rehabilitation, this study showed that more than 25% of all referred municipality rehabilitation plans were never initiated. If the initiation of a rehabilitation plan was delayed beyond 30 days, it significantly reduced the likelihood of initiation. Therefore, the international community need to keep focus on early rehabilitation and increase the use of rehabilitation in the future.