FirstHealth Center for Inpatient Rehab Achieves 7th Consecutive Accreditation

A therapist helps a FirstHealth physical therapy patient onto a “front porch” that is part of the therapeutic Rehab Village in the FirstHealth Inpatient Center for Rehabilitation at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital. The Center for Inpatient Rehabilitation recently earned its seventh consecutive three-year accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) for its adult inpatient rehabilitation and stroke specialty programs.

PINEHURST – David Birkhauser visited the Center for Inpatient Rehabilitation at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital before his double knee replacement surgery and decided even then that’s where he wanted to have the inpatient therapy he would need after the operation.

“I insisted on going to FirstHealth for rehab,” Birkhauser says. “I visited (the unit) and was sold on FirstHealth.”

Since Birkhauser’s six-night stay in the unit in January, Moore Regional’s Center for Inpatient Rehabilitation has earned its seventh consecutive three-year accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) for its adult inpatient rehabilitation and stroke specialty programs.

An independent, nonprofit accrediting body, CARF was founded in 1966 to establish consumer-focused standards to help rehab organizations measure and improve the quality of their programs and services. Accreditation means that an organization has demonstrated that it meets international standards for quality and is committed to pursing excellence.

The recognition represents the highest level of accreditation the organization can achieve. FirstHealth’s inpatient rehab and stroke specialty programs have been CARF-accredited for the past 18 years.

“These stringent standards indicate a hallmark for quality by integrating processes that help FirstHealth's inpatient rehab center reduce our exposure to risk in areas of staffing, patient care, governance and finance,” says Linda DeYoung, administrative director, FirstHealth Centers for Rehabilitation.

“The accreditation gives our inpatient rehab center the opportunity to share ideas with an international network of other providers that have also earned accreditation so that the best and most advanced methods are used to evaluate and treat our patients.”

According to DeYoung, maintaining accreditation requires an ongoing and rigorous analysis of many activities from the entire inpatient rehab team – the patient, the rehab physician, the nursing staff, case manager/social workers, admission coordinators, speech-language pathologists, and physical and occupational therapy staff.

“This also includes other hospital areas that influence or provide services to the inpatient rehab center and its patients,” she says.

David Birkhauser calls the decision to have both of his knees replaced at the same time “without a doubt” the most difficult one he has ever made. He has been more than pleased with the outcome, however.

From the surgery performed by orthopaedic surgeon John R. Moore, M.D., of Pinehurst Surgical to his inpatient hospitalization to his inpatient rehab stay to his physical therapy with FirstHealth Home Health, everything went smoothly.

At “66 and very active,” Birkhauser wanted his quality of life back and was far from content with the direction his life had taken due to the constant pain in his knees. He says FirstHealth’s inpatient rehab program helped him regain that quality of life and get back on the golf course in six weeks.

“If you do the rehab well, you won’t have an issue,” Birkhauser says. “And that was the case. If they had not been the quality they are, it would not have gone as well. On a scale of 1 to 100, I give (the FirstHealth program) a 110. The people there were amazing. My physical therapist was really, really amazing, very focused and very dedicated. She knew exactly how to get me to move.”