RehaBlog

Rehabilitation Systems Comments: Cancer treatments with increasing survivability rates have shifted cancer into the chronic disease category. This significant change is both a relief to one diagnosed with cancer and a challenge to the restorative professionals taking front and center positions to coach, support and motivate cancer survivors as they travel the restoration pathway to increased quality of life. Now is the time to leverage every caring hand in the quest for functional and social independence from cancer.

Cancer Rehabilitation: An Expanding Need

Deborah Julie Franklin, PhD,MD

Assistant Professor

Dept. of Rehabilitation Medicine Thomas Jefferson University

There can be no misunderstanding that telemedicine will play an increasing roll in rehabilitation for one reason alone, to increase access to care. However, with our aging population who officially enter the Medicare system in 2011, the cost of doing business as usual will simply be a matter of addition and subtraction makeing the case for telemedicine. That is, the addition of 78 million citizens accessing medicare between 2011 and 2029 and the subtraction of declining resources by an ageing population makes outcomes clear. According to the Institute of Medicine, we need three significant adjustment as we serve the senior population in the next two or three decades.