Rehabilitation

Well, rehabilitation in traumatic brain injury is a life long process and that’s really one of most devastating things for families to learn early on, that depending on the severity of the brain injury, it’s a life long process of rehab that’s involved. The critical care in the hospital these days within a set period of time and the hospital makes a decision that they have done all that they can possibly do for the victim and sometimes depending on the insurance that is available there is again a set period of time to rehab in an inpatient facility, rehab facility and again major issues are addressed with the traumatic brain injury, you can have everything from loss of speech, inability to walk, balance and these are addressed in these rehab hospitals to various types of therapy, the physical therapy, speech, cognitive therapy and occupational therapy for the hands and the finger movements and all of this is very important but again, in today’s world with insurance as it is for set period of time and then the families are left on their own. The patients still needs cognitive therapy, the patient still needs physical therapy and speech therapy and it may or may not be available. Family needs assistance in many instances because the victim needs services during the day but the family has other responsibilities too. How is it going to be met? This is part of the role of a lawyer who gets involved in these cases to understand what the resources are that are available, to find out what the family needs, to find out what types of therapies are needed and they build that into part of the modal of the case so that you understand what the problem is so that you can go back coming up with the plan to address the needs of the family and this is very important, it’s a big responsibility and one of the early challenges in these cases is to really meet with the family and to all come to an understanding together about what is going to be required in terms of a long term life time care of a patient who suffer a traumatic brain injury. Rehab, that’s a life time question.