Advanced Neurorehabilitation: The California Rehabilitation Institute

Spring 2018

Transforming Rehabilitation

UCLA and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center have teamed up to open the largest neurorehabilitation hospital on the West Coast. The California Rehabilitation Institute (Cal Rehab) opened in 2016 and represents a remarkable and unprecedented health partnership between these two premier healthcare institutions in Los Angeles. The UCLA Health neurorehabilitation unit, run by UCLA Neurology, moved with the neurorehabilitation service at Cedars-Sinai into the new 138-bed hospital. This partnership to build the inpatient acute rehabilitation facility also includes Select Medical, an industry leader in partnering with academic medical centers. Our own Dr. David Alexander, Susan and David Wilstein Endowed Chair in Rehabilitation Medicine, is the Medical Director at Cal Rehab.

Cal Rehab serves a clear need in the community for inpatient rehabilitation and recovery as evidenced by our rapid growth. In the first few days after opening less than two years ago, we had one patient in the hospital, and now we care for more than 100 patients at a time. This growth has meant continually recruiting the best caregivers and training them to meet our patients’ and physicians’ needs. We have a staff of 507, including rehab nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, recreational therapists, registered dieticians, and other caring support staff.

To serve the needs of our patients, we have 10 full-time rehabilitation physicians who have received their primary training in neurology or in physical medicine and rehabilitation. Among them, we have specialists with fellowship training in neurocritical care and spinal cord medicine. In addition, UCLA hospitalists see patients seven days a week, and there is seamless 24/7 in-house physician coverage. We have more than 150 physicians on our medical staff, representing a wide range of specialties. Educating future health professionals is an integral part of Cal Rehab. We train neurology residents from UCLA and Cedars-Sinai, as well as physical medicine and rehabilitation residents from the Veterans Administration programs. We are a popular medical student rotation. In addition, we train pharmacy interns, neuropsychology interns, and vascular (stroke) neurology fellows from Cedars-Sinai.

We aim to give our patients the highest level of care, including providing a comprehensive and detailed review of patient medications on admission to ensure accuracy and appropriateness, a newly developing rehabilitation research agenda, and a high discharge-to-home-and-community rate, with 97 percent living at home within 90 days. Still in its relative infancy, Cal Rehab has been well received and will continue to grow as a valued asset to patients, families, partner academic medical centers, and the community at large. We invite you to learn more about us at (424) 522-7100.