[Early rehabilitation care in the hospital--definition and indication. Results of the expert group "Early Rehabilitation Care in the Hospital"].

As a result of the continuing development in recent medicine, and improvements of emergency services, an increasing number of patients are surviving serious disease and injury. This has increased the need for rehabilitation, starting already during the acute hospital stay. Early identification and rehabilitation may reduce overall costs and help patients to regain independence earlier. Since the eighties specialized early post-acute rehabilitation units have been increasingly implemented in German hospitals. With book 9 of the German Social Code (SGB IX) coming into effect in July 2001, early post-acute rehabilitation care in hospitals became accepted as a social right. However, the specifics of early rehabilitation care have not been defined. There is a lack of generally accepted indication criteria for early rehabilitation services. Similarly, the aims, objectives and methods need to be specified. It was the objective of a group of interested experts from different fields and backgrounds to achieve an interdisciplinary consensus in terms of conceptual definitions and terminology for all early rehabilitation care services in the acute hospital. The development of the definitions and criteria was achieved by using a modified Delphi-technique. By publishing this paper the group is providing information about its activities and results. Examples of typical cases from the various fields of early rehabilitation care were identified and described. Furthermore, the report points out a number of other problems in the area of early rehabilitation care, which have yet to be solved.