Given the scale and operational expertise needed in today’s competitive healthcare market place, hospitals are seeking strategic partners to help address the growing needs of the medically complex patient population.
Learn 3 key ways long-term acute care hospitals (LTACHs) can help your hospital meet the growing patient need in your local community.
Specialized service lines, such as long-term acute care, have become increasingly vital as the number of patients with multiple comorbidities rises. Partnership with LTACHs that focus on treating medically complex patients is especially valuable for:
- Decreasing Length of Stay (LOS)
Integration with an LTACH through a strategic partnership enables a hospital to easily identify and transfer patients best suited for long-term acute care.
This is done through regular coordination of physicians and care managers, implementation of daily/weekly screenings, maintaining a referral log and monitoring results through weekly performance report reviews. Critically ill patients are then able to receive the prompt, specialized care they need to be successfully discharged to a lower level of care, and therefore freeing up beds for more patients.
- Reducing Readmissions
At an LTACH, patients receive regular physician oversight and care from an interdisciplinary team of specialists and caregivers, based upon the patient’s needs, such as respiratory therapists, speech-language pathologist and pulmonologists.
Having a partner with a robust team of national recruiters who can identify qualified, engaged and devoted candidates to fill these roles can improve patient outcomes and help produce greater access to resources and specialized expertise, including hospital-level infection control and physician oversight.
When patients receive quality care at a level that aligns with their medical needs, they are more likely to experience a complete recovery, and less likely to readmit to the hospital.
- Lowering Care Costs
While medically complex patients make up only a small percentage of the U.S. patient population, their care needs have a significant impact on hospital costs. With highly-trained staff, daily physician visits and customized care plans, LTACHs can reduce care costs. Innovative technologies, Joint Commission accreditations and advanced infection control protocols also support positive patient outcomes.
Once your hospital determines the complex patient population would benefit from specialized care, identifying the partnership model best suited to meet their unique needs is an important next step.
Read our white paper to learn about 3 partnership models available to meet the opportunity in your hospital’s local community.