COVID-19: maintaining essential rehabilitation services across the care continuum

Abstract

Rehabilitation services are essential: They need to continue during a pandemic and after as they are an essential component of high-value care offered for individuals across the lifespan to optimise physical and cognitive functioning to reduce disability. Rehabilitation care is affected: Globally, the response to COVID-19 is shifting rehabilitation services provided in all settings, introducing new burden on patients, families and healthcare workers. Measurement needed: A core set of measures needs to be adopted to monitor the health and functional outcomes for COVID-19 and other patients at risk for functional decline and to assess the quality, availability and accessibility of services today and as our nations recover. Telerehabilitation is necessary: Remote delivery of care and the necessary rapid scale-up of telehealth could be optimised if financial, infrastructure, resource, training and cybersecurity barriers were addressed. Collaboration can support needs in the home: Novel partnerships that include the rehabilitation community could enhance communication and delivery of safe and effective home-based rehabilitative strategies to mitigate the consequences of COVID-19 and reduced service capacity. Direct care providers need personal protective equipment: Rehabilitation providers in all settings should be ensured personal protective equipment and training to use it effectively.