How long should physical therapy for a spinal cord injury continue after leaving a rehabilitation center? - Isa McClure, MAPT

Generally speaking, we hate to say it, but a lot of times, it is insurance mandated. Insurance companies will tell you that if the person is independent and functioning, they really don’t need therapy any more. So it kind of depends, if somebody has a wound, they’re clearly going to be seen longer in a different setting. If somebody has any sort of concomitant injury from the actual accident that gave them the spinal cord injury, they’re going to be seen for that a little bit longer. So it’s a very individualized question or answer rather, so unfortunately, it depends. I’ve had patients come in and in four weeks they’re done with their inpatient rehab, they do two weeks of homecare and in four weeks their out of outpatient rehab, but it depends. If there’s any change in status — meaning let’s say someone has that tetraplegic or quadriplegic injury and they get pneumonia after going home — they might come back to inpatient rehab, they might go right back to outpatient rehab for some generalized conditioning exercises. But it really does sort of depend.