Hi David. The situation you pointed out is rather disturbing but this may be only a separated event and it should not be generalized until there is data to support it, but if these situations show an increasing trend then it is something to worry about.
This is the first time I hear about such and event and raising awareness is appreciated nonetheless.
I agree that most of the patients,after hip or knee replacement surgery, rely on the recommendations of their surgeons, and I’m sure they are appointed a physical therapist the moment they leave the hospital. I believe that the appointed therapist can make recommendation after their “time expired”, or even during, to follow supplementary therapy sessions.
I have a good friend who’s a physical therapist and I know from him that in this profession the end results depends mostly on the patients will. Maybe there is another side this story and that is the lack of interest of the patients, or the lack of will to do more than they was told to do.

Best regards,
Colin.

P.S.: You have a great blog and I’m glad I came across it.

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Very Good site, thank yo mister, it’s help’s me!

Hi David, I completely agree with your analysis of this situation. To put a positive slant on this we ( fee-for-service MSK clinic in Saskstoon, Sk, Canada) recently have had the good fortune of working with an insightful in-patient PT who has refered his post-operative knee and hip patients to our clinic once their short course hospital outpatient treatment has run its course. Better yet this PT has had the gull to press the patient’s priviate insurer to fund a rehabilitation program at our clinic. Believe it or not a few of these private insurers actually agreed to this recommendation. Anecdotely, there is no comparison between the outcome of these patients who receive the extra biomechanical care, regional specific resistance training and functional conditioning, and those patients who you see for the first time two months after they’ve been discharged from the publically funded post-operative treatment. I believe this is were the physiotherapy profession (more then any other therapeutic provider) can make a substantial difference in a person’s quality of life. I don’t necessarily agree that more funding needs to be provided by the health institutions to provide for more publically funded PT services. In fact I believe the responsibility lies on the PT community to instill in the client and private insurers the importance of post-surgical PT care in providing for improved quality of life, decreased mobidity, deceased medical sick days and work-time loss; And although yes, unfortunately there is going to be a financial cost associated with this extra service, in the end it is well worth it!

I enjoy your web site and blog, keep it up!

Craig B.
Dip. Manip. PT, FCAMPT

My cousin recommended this blog and she was totally right keep up the fantastic work!