Key Articles

For hospitals, especially ICUs, reducing patient length of stay results in dramatic cost savings for both the individual patient and the hospital itself. Surveys done in both ICUs and across different units universally found that early mobilization dramatically contributed to improved patient turnover, improved patient outcomes, and millions of dollars in savings for the hospital.

Right now, hospitals in Spain and Italy have become hopelessly overwhelmed. Healthcare workers are releasing video clips that show coronavirus patients packed onto chairs and lying on floors, waiting for medical attention. Resources are so scarce that patients are lying on jackets and using their own bags as pillows. Healthcare facilities have fewer and fewer options for situating patients that desperately need access to multiple pieces of medical equipment, and as conditions in the United States worsen, these scenes may become all too common.

On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of the coronavirus (“COVID-19”) a “public health emergency of international concern;” a few weeks later, the Center for Disease Control & Prevention announced that “at some point, widespread transmission of COVID-19 in the United States will occur,” warning that “public health and healthcare systems may become overloaded, with elevated rates of hospitalizations and deaths,” and that emergency medical services, healthcare providers, and hospitals “may be overwhelmed.”

Recovering from a major illness or injury can be a slow and difficult process. But when patients are bed-bound, simply being in the hospital can add further complications. In the United States alone, 600,000 patients acquire healthcare-associated infections every year, resulting in nearly 100,000 preventable fatalities (Vaughn 2020).

The fact that immobility causes muscle stiffness and weakness is familiar to anyone who sits in a chair for too long, but can immobility actually cause permanent nerve damage? Recent studies reveal that immobility during hospital stays can cause damage to the peripheral nervous system, increase the likelihood and severity of delirium, and slow recovery for patients with neurological problems.

One critical factor in determining a patient’s capacity for early mobility is their mental state, which nurses judge on a case-by-case basis. But it turns out that early mobility can actually stimulate patients’ mental well-being and improve their emotional well-being, which immediately improves the patients’ quality of life, while reducing the serious risk of delirium and decreasing overall recovery time.

As far back as 1949, Dr. D.J. Leithauser wrote that: Ten years ago early ambulation was considered a “crackpot” idea. Today it is recognized and is rapidly approaching a “must” procedure following surgical operation. Seventy years later, Doctors, nurses, and administrators all agree that early patient mobility has tremendously beneficial outcomes.

Mobility is a key factor which advances healing during any hospitalization. In fact, the lack of mobility creates many problems that have for far too long been ignored by medical facilities.