Objectives To determine patient, treatment, or facility characteristics that influence decisions to initiate a rehabilitation assessment before transtibial or transfemoral amputation within the Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system. Design Retrospective database study. Setting VA medical centers. Participants A total of 4226 veterans with lower extremity amputations discharged from a VA medical center between October 1, 2002, and September 30, 2004. Outcome Evidence of a preoperative rehabilitation assessment after the index surgical stay admission but before the surgical date. Results Evidence was found that 343 of 4226 veterans (8.12%) with lower extremity amputations received preoperative rehabilitation assessments. Veterans receiving preoperative rehabilitation were more likely to be older, admitted from home, or transferred from another hospital. Patients who underwent surgical amputation at smaller-sized hospitals or in the South Central or Mountain Pacific regions were more likely to receive preoperative rehabilitation compared with patients in mid-sized hospitals or in the Northeast, Southeast, or Midwest regions. Patients with evidence of paralysis, patients treated in facilities with programs accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (P < .01), and patients in the second data wave were less likely to receive preoperative rehabilitation. After accounting for patient-, treatment-, and facility-level structural characteristics, we found that older patients were more likely to receive preoperative rehabilitation services (odds ratio [OR] 1.01, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.01–1.02). Patients with a contributing amputation etiology of a previous amputation complication were more likely to receive preoperative consultation rehabilitation services (OR 1.50, 95% CI 1.02–2.19) compared with patients who did not have this etiology. Compared with patients treated in the Southeast region of the United States, those treated in the South Central region (OR 2.52, 95% CI 1.82–3.48) or Mountain Pacific region (OR 1.62, 95% CI 1.11–2.37) were more likely to receive preoperative consultation rehabilitation services. Patients with evidence of paralysis were less likely to receive preoperative rehabilitative services compared with patients who did not have this condition (OR 0.29, 95% CI 0.09–0.93), and patients treated in mid-sized hospitals also were less likely to receive preoperative rehabilitative services compared with patients treated in smaller-sized facilities (OR 0.38, 95% CI 0.27–0.53). Veterans in the second data year were less likely to receive services compared with patients in the first year (OR 0.74, 95% CI 0.58–0.94). Conclusions Rehabilitation assessment before lower extremity amputation surgery is a rare occurrence in the VA health care system. Practice patterns appear to be driven by location and not by patient characteristics.

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