Rehabilitation professionals can also evaluate residents for appropriate use of adaptive devices. These devices can significantly help to improve the quality of life both in the facility and when the resident returns home. Often adaptive devices can help to improve self-esteem, which can also improve the outcomes in their recovery. Last year we helped to return 154 people back to the community after an acute hospital stay. Often, the brief stay at our facility is the perfect stepping stone to transition them from hospital to community.

Due to the rehabilitation focus, our facility has the highest volume of rehabilitation of any skilled nursing facility in the area. We also maintain an outpatient program that allows us to provide therapy to our residents even after they go home, as well as a special outpatient program that is providing therapy to the residents of several other Skilled Nursing Facilities in Santa Clara County. This focus has also helped the facility to draw some of the strongest and most experienced geriatric-trained therapist.

It is usually easy to determine when a resident will need the assistance of our therapy department when they are transferred from an acute care hospital. They generally come with an order to evaluate the potential need for OT, PT and/or ST. We only evaluate and treat with the order of the attending physician.

We have been working with a program intended to improve the quality of life for all of our residents; it is named "Back to Basics". It is a program that helps to increase functioning at the most basic levels, beginning with the dining process. In this program, all of the staff members of Los Altos Sub-Acute and Rehabilitation Center are trained to identify resident needs that can be potentially met through therapy interventions. This includes all departments, even housekeeping and laundry staff. Since they are with the residents every day, it is easy for them to identify when there is a change in the resident's status.