What is Rehabilitative Therapy

Description of Rehabilitative Therapy.

The concept of rehabilitative therapy includes recovery or improvement in function and, when possible, restoration to a previous level of health and well-being. Therefore, evaluation, re-evaluation and assessment documented in the Progress Report should describe objective measurements which, when compared, show improvements in function, or decrease in severity, or rationalization for an optimistic outlook to justify continued treatment.

Covered therapy services shall be rehabilitative therapy services unless they meet the criteria for maintenance therapy requiring the skills of a therapist described below. Rehabilitative therapy services are skilled procedures that may include but are not limited to:

Evaluations; reevaluations

Establishment of treatment goals specific to the patient’s disability or dysfunction and designed to specifically address each problem identified in the evaluation;

Design of a plan of care addressing the patient’s disorder, including establishment of procedures to obtain goals, determining the frequency and intensity of treatment;

Continued assessment and analysis during implementation of the services at regular intervals;
Instruction leading to establishment of compensatory skills;

Selection of devices to replace or augment a function (e.g., for use as an alternative communication system and short-term training on use of the device or system); and

Patient and family training to augment rehabilitative treatment or establish a maintenance program. Education of staff and family should be ongoing through treatment and instructions may have to be modified intermittently if the patient’s status changes.