ABSTRACT
In view of the increasing demands for more co-operation and integration among health care providers and "uninterrupted" care delivery processes increasing attention is being paid to establishing the determinants of a more flexible form of rehabilitation setting. Interest is focused particularly on determining at what stages and under what conditions specific choices of rehabilitation setting are made. In 1838 patients admitted consecutively to a cardiological rehabilitation clinic, the study investigated how many patients opted for outpatient rehabilitation and what factors influenced the patients' choice of rehabilitation setting. A total of 165 (9 %) of the 1838 patients chose outpatient rehabilitation. Patients who prefer outpatient rehabilitation are mainly male, belong to a higher social class and are younger. Patients who choose inpatient treatment feel more restricted by their illness. This is also revealed in the difference in coping strategies employed. Patients who prefer the inpatient setting show a greater tendency towards rumination than outpatients. It is thus comprehensible that these patients hope to gain a greater distance from their day-to-day problems. The results indicate that patients' willingness to take advantage of outpatient forms of rehabilitation is moderated both by sociodemographic, psychosocial and disease-related variables as well as by context variables. It is embedded in the complex biopsychosocial conditions governing rehabilitation. One consequence for managing the introduction of more flexible modes of rehabilitation could be to avoid dirigistic and unidimensional control parameters. The results indicate that more flexible disease management cannot follow fixed rules, but rather that the planning of individual requirements should be taken into account.
