Around the world, millions of people undergo surgery every year, where nearly one in four patients experience complications, prolonged hospital stays or slow recovery. According to an estimate of the World Health Organisation, 30% of surgical patients in certain countries endure post-operative complications that could have been prevented with better preparation. In the US alone, hospital re-admissions related to surgery cost upwards of $25 billion yearly. These numbers point to a major global concern, where we often wait until after surgery to act, rather than getting patients prepared beforehand. That gap is now being addressed through structured prehabilitation.
A Real-World Gap in Surgical Care
Healthcare systems everywhere struggle with similar issues, like many patients going into surgery weak, stiff, anxious, or lacking cardiovascular stamina. Surgeons and physical therapists usually begin their work post-op, dealing an uphill challenge when patients come out from anesthesia. In low and middle-income nations, limited access to rehabilitation services makes this even more difficult. Clinics often lack space, staff, or funding. Rural areas may have little connection to specialized care. All this results in longer recovery, more complications, and heavier burdens on families and healthcare systems.
Even in high-income countries, such as the U.K. and Australia, post-operative rehab services are stretched thin. Staff shortages and rising demand implies patients at times need to wait weeks for therapy, slowing their return to daily life or work. This reactive model simply scales up inefficiencies on the global stage.
A Fresh Approach: Preparing Before the Scalpel
This is where Isha Bhonde's prehabilitation model steps in. Her idea is different; not reactive but proactive. Instead of waiting, she starts patients on a personalized program well in advance of surgery. That includes strength work, flexibility routines, cardiovascular conditioning, while easing anxiety and building motivation.
By combining physical preparation with mental readiness, patients arrive at surgery stronger, calmer, and recover faster. "We're not just building muscle," she says, "we're building confidence, strength, and a mindset that speeds healing." This simple phrase captures the heart of the work, that is fostering holistic readiness.
The remarkable aspect of this model is that it broadly applies in both clinics and markets. In private outpatient centers, prehabilitation has rapidly become a differentiator. Clinics that adopt the model report faster turnover, lower costs per patient, and higher satisfaction scores. Patients who recover sooner are more likely to take up follow-up packages, which improves revenues. Physical therapy chains now market "prehab packages" as preventative, high-value services. In retail therapy contexts, consider physiotherapy within wellness centers or fitness clinics, where prehabilitation opens new services, like pre-surgery fitness memberships or remote guidance apps.
Internationally, Isha's protocols are featured in continuing education seminars from India to Canada, from the Middle East to Africa. Trainers adopt her functional, fine-tuned protocols and mental coaching frameworks. Hospitals in low-income settings, where post-operative care is limited, see immense value; here patients who are better prepared need fewer days in hospital, and it is true savings that matter where resources are tight.
A Digital Leap: Prehabilitation Goes Global Online
The most significant development is the emergence of a digital platform based on her framework. By providing tailored exercise plans, progress tracking, educational videos, and messaging tools, this platform brings prehabilitation to underserved regions. Patients in rural villages, small towns, or developing countries can access guided routines on smartphones, livestream consults, and motivational coaching; all before their surgeries. Clinics use it to monitor compliance, adjust programs remotely, and even mark red-flags early.
The digital integration turns a once-local protocol into something scalable and borderless. In markets where telemedicine is expanding fast, such as Southeast Asia and Latin America, this model intersects with healthcare digitalization trends, opening opportunities for insurance partnerships and remote-pay models. In Europe, some insurers are analyzing reimbursements for "pre-surgery readiness programs," recognizing that up-front investment leads to downstream savings. It is commercial thinking that aligns with better patient outcomes, and with global healthcare economics shifting toward value-based care.
Societal Impact: More Than Just Faster Recovery
It might look simpler to quantify shorter stays or fewer readmissions, but there is much more to it. When patients return home sooner and stronger, families confront less caregiving stress. Working-age individuals can resume jobs sooner, lessening economic strain. In low-resource areas, preventing complications helps health systems manage low bed count and personnel.
A surgeon in Nairobi reported that patients who followed the prehabilitation model often left the hospital "two days earlier, walking with confidence", an invaluable change in low-resource settings. This is a change that impacts through lowering costs, increasing independence, easing emotional anxiety, and restoring hope.
At the Intersection of Therapy and Innovation
Unlike approaches that concentrate only on strength or flexibility, Isha Bhonde's model integrates mind-body readiness. That nuance makes a difference as research shows mental stress can slow healing or raise complication rates. By adding motivational coaching and mental preparation, the model shifts the culture of surgical care from fear-based to readiness-based. This is a powerful initiative; one that intersects with wellness trends, patient empowerment movements, and prevention-focused healthcare. Over time, trainers in fitness centers, wellness brands, and physical therapy chains are exploring adapted "pre-surgery empowerment" programs rooted in her framework. Consumers, especially athletes and pre-operative patients who value proactive health, are drawn to offerings that are more inclined towards fitness and healing, and not rehab.
Moreover, as the global stress of surgical complications, extended hospital stays, and stalled recovery is growing rapidly aging populations, rising surgical rates, and stretched healthcare budgets now demand smarter solutions. This model is already demonstrating what is possible when preparation leads the process.
As digital health grows, and as healthcare systems shift toward outcomes over actions, prehabilitation fits perfectly. It saves money, spreads across the globe, supports patients, and inspires new delivery initiatives. It brings physical therapy into the center of care, before the challenge ever begins.
In the years ahead, this model could change surgical care, with its digital platforms reaching remote clinics. Payors may pay for prehabilitation as a covered service. Mental-physical health integration could become the norm across physiotherapy, not the exception. All of that begins with the simple idea to "prepare before the procedure, not only afterwards."
