Amanda Wilde (Host): After a serious illness or injury, rehabilitation can be your key to recovery. Just ahead, we'll talk about how rehabilitation services work so you can get the most from them with physical medicine and rehabilitation physician, Dr. Ankit Gulati. Dr. Gulati is physiatrist and Medical Director, JL Bedsole Rotary Rehabilitation Hospital and Medical Director, Colony Rehabilitation Hospital.

This is LIFE Cast, a podcast from Infirmary Health. I'm Amanda Wilde. Dr. Gulati, thank you for joining us.

Dr Ankit Gulati: Thank you for having me.

Host: Let's start with what actually is the medical definition of rehabilitation.

Dr Ankit Gulati: So, rehabilitation is, in this case, restoring patients' bodily functions and helping them regain their quality of life following a serious disease or injury of some sort.

Host: So, who are the candidates? Who needs rehabilitation?

Dr Ankit Gulati: People that need rehabilitation are usually people that have had severe medical issues happen, such as a stroke; people that have had complex surgeries or infections, as well as patients in car accidents or people that have had amputations, brain injuries and spinal cord injuries.

Host: What type of rehabilitation services are there and what might a patient need in these different situations?

Dr Ankit Gulati: So, in our instance, in our specialty, we're talking about physical rehabilitation and medical rehabilitation. So, physically speaking, after someone has an event such as a stroke, they have problems moving parts of their body, and the difficulty in moving parts of their body results in problems walking, standing, sitting, moving from the bed to the chair, and then also what we call activities of daily living, which includes things such as dressing, going to the bathroom and grooming.

Host: So, you address all the functions of getting through the day. Is it true that you also have psychological and cognitive rehabilitation services?

Dr Ankit Gulati: Yes. So, part of our team includes a physical therapist and an occupational therapist, which address, of course, the physical needs. And then, we have speech therapy, which works on the cognitive, emotional and psychological aspects of a patient's care, as well as assessing their swallowing to see if there's any deficits there.

Our team is pretty comprehensive and, in addition to that, also includes nursing and then also social work and case management, as well as a pharmacy component that ensures that we're not only delivering the right quality of care, we're delivering the right medications and getting patients everything that they need to get back to their level of function.

Host: So, this sounds like a really holistic approach to rehabilitation.

Dr Ankit Gulati: Yes, ma'am. It definitely is a comprehensive rehabilitation program.

Host: Let's talk specifically about Infirmary Health's inpatient rehabilitation locations, because there are two. Can you talk about those two locations and what we can expect entering those?

Dr Ankit Gulati: Sure. I'll start with our location in Mobile and that's JL Bedsole Rotary Rehabilitation Hospital. It's on the third floor inside of Mobile Infirmary Medical Center. And it's actually been serving the community since the 1930s and initially started as a children's ward after children were getting polio, and that's how it kind of started, and it's continued on since then. And our second location, which opened in 2018, is Colony Rehabilitation Hospital and that is in Fairhope on the third floor also of Thomas Hospital.

Host: So, those are from two different centuries, actually. So, how do you ensure quality and consistency between the two locations?

Dr Ankit Gulati: Rotary Rehabilitation Hospital has been around, like I said, since the '30s. And when I first started working at Infirmary Health, we had the one location, and one of the things that's happened as many of the listeners are probably aware of is the large population growth in Baldwin County. And with Infirmary Health's expansion with Thomas Hospital, it was evident that we needed to go ahead and establish a rehabilitation hospital in Baldwin County because of the needs there. So, we used a lot of our same standards that we have in Mobile. And with our staff working together, we're able to get everything developed and opened that rehabilitation hospital in Fairhope.

Host: And then, there is this CARF Accreditation. What is that?

Dr Ankit Gulati: The CARF Accreditation is a real important piece and component of inpatient rehabilitation hospitals. It stands for the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities or CARF for short. It's a international non profit organization. It ensures quality for inpatient rehabilitation hospitals. So, there's over 30,000 standards and what they're evaluating is, is your nursing doing all the things it needs to help prevent development of secondary complications such as pneumonia or pressure injuries or other problems that people would have. Are your therapists using the latest level of research and evidence-based care to provide to your rehab patients so that way they can maximize their rehabilitation potential and get back to their prior status. And Rotary Rehab Hospital in Mobile was actually the only CARF-accredited hospital when it started back in 1997 with CARF accreditation. And that's something that the organization has continued to participate in and to me has been really great because I'm making sure that the care we're providing to our patients here locally is world-class.

Host: Yeah. It's so reassuring that you have consistent high quality standards both internally and externally along with this long history of the Bedsole Rehab Hospital. What would you say makes our locations stand out from others?

Dr Ankit Gulati: So, I think, like you had said initially, the experience that we have, having done this since the thirties and having been CARF-accredited since the late '90s certainly leads to a level of experience that ensures the best quality for our patients. And then, we are also the only rehabilitation hospital locally that has physical medicine and rehabilitation board-certified physicians running the hospital. And this is a specific medical specialty where we are trained specifically for rehab. And so, the organization is able to provide that specialized care that our population here locally needs.

Host: Well, how can someone become a patient at one of these fabulous rehab facilities?

Dr Ankit Gulati: So when something does happen to an individual, the case manager at whatever hospital they're at, so if that's locally at Mobile Infirmary or at Providence Hospital or at University of South Alabama or Spring Hill Medical Center, their case manager would have to make a referral to our department. That's predominantly known, is done through a communication tool that they have. But we also do have referral lines. And then, our website can also help guide them. And on our website, it talks a little bit about what type of patients meet the criteria and would be best served at a rehab hospital. And I'll briefly touch on those. And, you know, these are people, like I mentioned earlier, have had pretty significant life-changing event. So, the strokes, the amputations, specific orthopedic injuries as well. And they're in the hospital and they're not back to their baseline function and that's something that they need and they also have to have some medical needs in addition to that. But the case management department at whatever hospital the patient is at would be able to make the referral and we would be able to then evaluate the patient and reach out to them and their family to let them know how to best proceed moving forward to help them in their rehab process.

Host: Wow. Thank you so much for making those rehabilitation services accessible. And thanks today for illuminating the facts about rehabilitation.

Dr Ankit Gulati: Not a problem. I appreciate it.

Host: That was physical medicine and rehabilitation physician, dr. Ankit Gulati, physiatrist and Medical Director, JL Bedsole Rotary Rehabilitation Hospital and Medical Director, Colony Rehabilitation Hospital. And for more information, visit infirmaryhealth.org. If you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social media. And thanks for listening to LIFE Cast, a podcast from Infirmary Health.