Discharge Planning

While hospitalized, you will be evaluated daily by a team that includes Dr. Lonner, Beverly Thomas, RN, Patrick D'Arco, PA, physical therapists, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, and a social worker, who together evaluate your progress and determine your preparedness for discharge either to home or to an inpatient rehabilitation facility (acute or subacute). Additionally, the medical consultant assigned to manage your medical care will make sure that it is appropriate from a medical perspective to be discharged. Prior to your discharge from the hospital or inpatient rehabilitation facility, you will be trained to climb up and down stairs. You will receive instructions for wound care, physical therapy, use of blood thinners, and follow up. You will be given prescriptions for pain medications as well as a blood thinner (again, typically Ecotrin or Coumadin).

A visiting nurse will come to your home two weeks after surgery to remove the staples which are used to close your surgical incision. Typically follow-up with our team will take place six weeks after the surgery, then at 3-1/2 months, and if your progress is on course, then at 12 months after surgery with additional visits in alternate years. Exceptions to this schedule are occasionally made depending on the specific details of your case. If you come from out of state or are an international patient, you may opt to have your postoperative care handled by a local orthopaedic surgeon. Radiographs will be taken at the initial postoperative visit and then at each annual visit unless there is clinical rationale to repeat the xrays at other visits as well.