What does the hospital actually send home with you after knee replacement?

It depends on the hospital, but the pattern that shows up in hospital discharge-planning pages is: mobility equipment that needs a doctor's order and a Medicare-enrolled supplier — a walker, a cane, sometimes a hospital bed — gets arranged through the hospital's case-management team, not handed to you at the door.

What are you expected to arrange yourself before knee replacement?

Bath-safety items — a raised toilet seat, a shower chair or bench, grab bars — are the clearest case. Hospitals commonly tell patients to order these before surgery, and Medicare's own claims data shows zero national claims for these codes: they're excluded from the DME benefit by statute, so no hospital process can get Medicare to pay for them.

What happens to equipment if you’re discharged to a rehab facility instead of straight home?

Equipment used during a skilled nursing facility or inpatient rehab stay belongs to that facility and doesn't travel home with you when you leave. What you need at your own house is a separate ask you should raise with the facility on admission, not on discharge day.

What the hospital gives you (and what you still need)

Reviewed by Erin Rose — healthcare price-transparency analyst. Last checked July 27, 2026.

Quick answer: The hospital typically arranges your walker, cane, and hospital bed through its case-management team. Bath-safety items — a raised toilet seat, a shower chair — are almost always on you to order ahead, before surgery. That split holds across the hospitals checked below, though yours may do it a little differently.

The fact

One hospital's own discharge-planning page draws an explicit line: "Any medical equipment that you might need, such as a wheelchair, walker or hospital bed, can be arranged through HSS" — while a raised toilet seat is something HSS says "can be ordered prior to your hospitalization so it is available when you are discharged home."

Fetched live from HSS (Hospital for Special Surgery, NYC) on July 27, 2026. HSS's page mixes items for hip and knee patients — the split itself, not every item name, is the useful part: some equipment routes through the hospital and a DME supplier, some you source yourself before surgery.

Source: Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), Case Management: Discharge Planning

Every hospital writes its own discharge list, and they don't fully agree on where the line sits. This page checks three real hospital patient-education pages against Medicare's own coverage data — so you know a fair general expectation. The actual paper your surgeon's office hands you at pre-op overrides anything written here.

What does the hospital actually send home with you?

The equipment flagged "covered with a prescription" on the full checklist — a walker (E0143), a cane (E0100), crutches (E0114), a bedside commode (E0163), a hospital bed (E0260) if you need one — isn't Medicare-covered because the hospital keeps a supply closet of them. It's covered because your doctor writes an order and a Medicare-enrolled DME supplier bills Part B, usually $25–$140 depending on the item (see the Medicare coverage page for the full table). HSS describes this as equipment that "can be arranged through HSS" — the case management team connects you to a supplier, not staff packing it in a bag.

Cleveland Clinic's own recovery guide is consistent from the patient side: a front-wheeled walker immediately after surgery, stepping down to a cane around three to four weeks in, and most patients home the same day or after one overnight stay.

What are you expected to arrange yourself?

The bath-safety cluster is the clearest split. HSS tells patients to order a raised toilet seat before surgery, "so it is available when you are discharged home" — not something the hospital arranges. Medicare's claims data backs that up independently: raised toilet seats (E0244), bath/shower chairs (E0240), tub transfer benches (E0247), and grab bars (E0246) all show zero national claims in DY2024 and no fee-schedule entry. These aren't excluded because hospitals forgot to ask Medicare to pay — they're excluded by statute (Social Security Act §1861(s)(6)). No case manager, however good, can arrange Medicare payment for something Medicare doesn't pay for.

Hospital-arranged vs. patient-arranged, by category (HSS's own split, checked against Medicare claims data)
Category	Who typically arranges it	What Medicare's DY2024 claims data shows
Walker (E0143)	Hospital case management → DME supplier, with a doctor's order	Covered — fee $55.55–$125.91; 508,460 billed nationally
Hospital bed (E0260)	Hospital case management → DME supplier, with a doctor's order	Covered — fee $72.80–$128.14; 758,660 billed nationally
Bedside commode (E0163)	Hospital case management → DME supplier, with a doctor's order	Covered — fee $60.15–$139.61; 139,220 billed nationally
Raised toilet seat (E0244)	You, before surgery (HSS: order it yourself)	Not covered — zero national claims, no fee-schedule entry
Shower chair / bath bench (E0240)	You, before surgery	Not covered — zero national claims, no fee-schedule entry
Grab bars (E0246)	You, before surgery	Not covered — zero national claims, no fee-schedule entry

Why does every hospital's list look different? ↓

Three real hospital systems, three different levels of specificity. HSS names the exact split above. Allina Health's "discharge equipment" page is vaguer — it says only that insurance may cover a walker or crutches, and points to a general community-resources directory, without naming a hospital-side process. Cleveland Clinic's recovery guide describes the equipment without drawing a hospital-vs.-you line at all. None of these three is wrong; they're answering at different levels of detail — which is why a generic list, including this one, is a starting point, not a substitute for the actual discharge list your surgeon's office gives you. That specific list wins.

What if you're discharged to a rehab facility instead of straight home?

Not everyone goes straight home. Some spend days to weeks in a skilled nursing facility (SNF) or inpatient rehab unit first. The equipment you use there — a wheelchair, a raised toilet seat, a shower bench — belongs to the facility, not you. What you need at your own house is a separate ask.

One AgingCare.com forum commenter, describing her experience coming home from a rehab stay after hip replacement, put the gap plainly: "In order for me to come home from rehab following hip replacement, an occupational therapist came out to our home to tell us what needed to be in place for me." She added: "A doctor's script is necessary for bathroom safety items (grab bars), wheelchair, walker, and other items for insurance to cover them." (General lower-extremity joint-replacement corpus, predominantly hip/THR — used as color from someone who lived the rehab-to-home hand-off, not as a coverage fact. See Sources below.)

The practical version: if a rehab stay is possible, ask on admission — not on discharge day — which equipment is the facility's and what you'll need at home. A doctor-ordered occupational-therapy home evaluation, like the one described above, is a real and reasonable thing to ask for before you leave.

How do you avoid a gap on discharge day?

Get the actual discharge equipment list from your surgeon's office or pre-op class. It overrides anything general written here.
Order anything flagged "buy" on the full checklist — raised toilet seat, shower chair, grab bars — before surgery. No hospital process gets Medicare to pay for these, so there's no supplier to chase after the fact.
For anything flagged "covered with a prescription" — walker, cane, crutches, commode, hospital bed — ask your case manager who the Medicare-enrolled supplier is before you're discharged, not after.
If a rehab stay is on the table, ask the facility on day one what's theirs versus what you need at home.
Before borrowing anything secondhand instead of buying, check it against a recall list first — see the borrowing checklist.

This is an equipment and cost-coverage guide, not medical advice or a substitute for your own hospital's discharge instructions. Follow the specific list and timeline your surgical team gives you over anything general written here.

Sources

Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) — Case Management: Discharge Planning — hospital-arranged vs. patient-arranged equipment split; fetched live 2026-07-27
Cleveland Clinic — "What to Expect After Knee Replacement Surgery" — walker/cane sequencing, discharge timing; fetched live 2026-07-27
Allina Health — Total Knee Replacement: Discharge Equipment — shown as a contrasting, less-specific hospital example; fetched live 2026-07-27
CMS DMEPOS Fee Schedule, July 2026 release (DME26-C) — fee ranges for E0143, E0163, E0260 cited above
CMS DMEPOS utilization by Geography and Service, DY2024 — national claim counts cited above; DY2024 is published with a ~1.5-year lag
Commodes — DME MAC Policy Article (A52461) — raised toilet seat / bath-safety exclusion basis
AgingCare.com forum thread, "Does insurance cover wheelchairs or bathroom safety items?" — rehab-to-home quotes above are verbatim from the raw forum-thread scrape — data/knee_corpus.json only carries a paraphrased summary of this thread, not the verbatim text; general lower-extremity joint-replacement commentary (predominantly hip/THR), used as color only, see the scope caveat in data/DATA-README.md