Considerations post-surgery

continued from page 8 provides a lot of services, especially for long-term services,” said Park. “So it’s important for for us as well as the patients to work together to really know the ins and outs of what their insurance can provide.”

The CFW Group in Queens operates three specialized nursing facilities in Queens. The short-term rehabilitation and subacute care units are located at Cliffside and Woodcrest, both in Flushing, and Forest View in Forest Hills.

Monica Wiedeman is the regional director of marketing and business development for the centers. She detailed the different focuses of the three centers.

Forest View has short-term capabilities that specialize in physical rehab, following a fall, for example. Cliffside offers rehab for people who need dialysis as well as pulmonary rehab or ventilator services. Woodcrest focuses on bariatric care, for patients weighing between 300 and 500 pounds.

The ultimate goal, Wiedeman said, is for patients to get strong enough to go home. Each facility has different capabilities and in order to achieve the best results, patients should go to the one that is a good so they do not have to return to the hospital.

“We recently had a patient that came here and she was on a ventilator and we weaned her off and within three months or so, she was able to go home,” Wiedeman said. “And she said that she was given a second chance at life.”

Those are the moments that staff are there for, she said.

There are other considerations following the surgery to consider, too.

Studies have found that improvements in hospital discharge planning can dramatically improve the outcome for patients as they move to the next level of care, according to the Family Caregiver Alliance, a nonprofit based out of California.

Although patients, family caregivers and healthcare providers all are involved in maintaining a patient’s health after discharge, there is a lack of consistency in the quality and process of planning across the health care system, the nonprofit states.

Park says the effort to close that gap is a priority in her departments, as is keeping caregivers engaged in the process.

Patients and caregivers should get a copy of their discharge paperwork to bring to their physician.

“When patients are admitted to the hospital, oftentimes it’s now the trend that their community docs don’t come to the hospital so they’re being taken care of by a different medical team that they have never seen before ... So it’s up to us to reach out to the community doctors to inform them and update them,” she added.

Having hospital staff connect with the patient’s community doctor ensures a smoother handoff, Park said. Q