Magee Rehabilitation Hospital Receives $300K Grant For Spinal Cord Injury Medical Home

By Dan Wing

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Magee Rehabilitation Hospital has been given a three-year grant worth $300,000 to help improve patients with spinal cord injury get in-home care after being discharged.

The grant money from the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation will go towards creating what’s called the Spinal Cord Injury Medical Home at Magee, which will be a team based approach to post-surgery care for patients after they’re released from the hospital. That can be a tough time, according to Magee spokeswoman Marci Reudiger:

“It is completely overwhelming to them. Despite all of the education and teaching that is done in in-patient rehab being home is very different, and it’s difficult for patients to imagine that until they’re actually in their homes.”

She says the goal is to reduce any medical complications that might pop up:

“Really keep them out of the hospital, keep them from being readmitted, and really help them on quality of life and staying well.”

Ruediger says this type of in-home service is usually reserved for primary care, or chronic conditions, making this one of the first programs of it’s kind:

“So we’re taking some of those same concepts that have been developed in primary care medical home and then adapting them to this population, and seeing where it takes us and what we can accomplish.”

Magee says priority enrollment in the program will be given to patients who have the highest risk of running into medical problems.