Summa Health System’s care coordination network of skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) is working to decrease fragmentation, length of stay and unnecessary readmissions while improving outcomes of care. Mike Demagall, administrator of Bath Manor & Windsong Care Center, a participant in this network, identified five barriers to patient care that originated in the acute care setting.
First, we found a lack of quality information received upon transfer from an acute care to a nursing facility and the lag time in identification of post-acute bed availability. The social worker was calling or faxing information to a facility, and the facility took up to 24 hours to respond as to whether a bed was available. That person may have been ready that day; instead it postponed that discharge another day.
We also had barriers to the patient’s acceptance of the need for post-acute care. Social workers and care coordinators at the bedside tell them when it is time for rehabilitation.
The next barrier was family expectations. Does the family feel that they need to go to the nursing home? The hospital staff and the insurers had to spot the appropriate levels of care. One of the concerns we had was, ‘Is this going to send a lot of our patients — our referrals — to home healthcare and decrease our referrals by participating in this?’ That happened to not be the case at all.
There was still a lack of knowledge and respect toward long-term care (LTC). All the discharge planning individuals, which were the case manager nurses and social workers, were able to tour the facility. Each facility had the opportunity to present their services and what they do. That helped with the overall cohesion of the group, and it moved this project forward.
There was also a lack of quality information received from the nursing facilities on the transfer to an emergency department (ED). That was information that we needed to get back, just as we were asking for information as those residents were coming in.
Excerpted from: 7 Patient-Centered Strategies to Generate Value-Based Reimbursement
