For hospitalized seniors, multi-disciplinary care that includes exercise allows them to leave the hospital sooner and in many cases, avoid having to be transferred to a rehabiliation facility.

Hospitalization can often lead to a loss of strength and mobility. Encouraging exercise as part of an acute hospital stay can prevent such losses.

Exercise only programs did not produce the same improvements in patients as a program that involved both standard care and exercise. Patients receiving multidisciplinary care went home one day earlier than those in standard care programs. In addition, six more patients out of 100 went directly home instead of to another health care facility such as a rehabilitation center.

The review appears in the most recent issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research.