Inpatient rehabilitation wheelchair management quality improvement project: Implications for patients with spinal cord injury

Context/Objective: Evaluate hospital fleet wheelchair (WC) requests submitted by physical therapists (PT) for patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) to trial and use during inpatient rehabilitation. Design: Quality improvement project secondary analysis of delivery process and WC trials. Setting: Ur...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The journal of spinal cord medicine 2023-05, Vol.46 (3), p.414-423
Main Authors: Taylor, Sally M., Slowinske, Laura, Dennison, Michael, Manusky, Colton, Tan, Shawn, Patel, Kinjal, Brewington, David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Humans
Inpatient rehabilitation
Inpatients
Physical therapist
Quality Improvement
Spinal Cord Injuries - rehabilitation
Spinal cord injury
Wheelchairs
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Summary:Context/Objective: Evaluate hospital fleet wheelchair (WC) requests submitted by physical therapists (PT) for patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) to trial and use during inpatient rehabilitation. Design: Quality improvement project secondary analysis of delivery process and WC trials. Setting: Urban inpatient rehabilitation hospital. Participants: Internal review of 4,371 WC requests narrowed to 750 patients with SCI. Interventions: PTs submitted WC requests between March 25, 2017, and September 30, 2019. Outcome Measures: WC delivery timeframe, level of SCI, type of WC. Results: PTs requested power (28%), and manual WC bases: standard (19.1%), tilt (18.9%), ultralight rigid (18.9%), ultralight folding (13.5%), and recliner (1.6%) respectively. Patients received fleet WCs 49.9% of the time within specified urgency timeframes. A Chi-Square test showed a significant association between WC request urgency and fulfillment within established timeframes (χ 2  = 19.68, P 
ISSN:1079-0268
2045-7723
DOI:10.1080/10790268.2021.2019656