Had a family member recently go through unexpected major surgery.

One thing I would mention:

You are not dealing with a monolithic entity with regards to a hospital.

There are really multiple groups with oftentimes competing interests e.g.

- case manager wants you out and home b/c that is the best "score" for the hospital. They also DO NOT want you to qualify for Medicare if you are a senior b/c, again, "score" gets dinged if Medicare gets involved

- surgeons want you out as they don't want you to pick up hospital infection. They want you to go to a rehab facility as that will more likely lead to a good outcome

- the hospitalist wants you to be stable in the short term so will pump you with whatever medications are necessary to get you "back to normal" without addressing any root cause

- the nurses generally care about you as a person as they deal with you the most but oftentimes have the least amount of say over your case

- in one of those perverse incentives/unintended consequences: if you do TOO well on a physical ability test, that might disqualify you from certain coverage even if you are below the threshold on other ability tests. That can have gigantic insurance implications.

This is prompting me to write my own version of the OP blog post.

Link to yours?