Prehabilitation now within reach for hospitals

A calculator, step-by-step plan, and implementation voucher help to remove organizational and financial barriers. The tools provide more insight into the benefits of prehabilitation, allowing these to be included in the business case. They have been developed together with twenty prehabilitating hospitals and offer direct guidance for healthcare professionals.

What is prehabilitation? 

Prehabilitation – strengthening the physical and mental health of patients prior to surgery – demonstrably contributes to fewer complications, shorter hospital stays, and faster recovery. “Prehabilitation is solid; it is appropriate care for patients undergoing major surgery, and therefore should be standard practice in every hospital,” says Jonas Rosenstok, Head of Office at Stichting Fit4Surgery. “With the road map, it is now clear how to organise this from a hospital, the calculator shows whether it is a financially responsible step, and with the implementation voucher, even the startup is covered — thus completing the circle.” Hospitals now have the means and insight to implement prehabilitation properly and in a financially feasible way.”

To further support hospitals, the Lifestyle in Healthcare Coalition offers implementation vouchers. These vouchers partially reimburse the costs of setting up and scaling prehabilitation programs. Additionally, prehabilitation is included in the list of implementation suggestions from the coalition, making it even more prominent.

Moving forward together 

Louise Blankensteijn, business development manager at Invest-NL: “Preventive care like prehabilitation is desperately needed to make healthcare sustainable in the future. At Invest-NL, we are happy to contribute to solutions that make such innovative initiatives financially feasible – these instruments are an important step in that direction.”