Under the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, Medicare will withhold 1% of a hospital\u2019s\u00a0reimbursement rate for readmissions that take place within 30 days of a discharge and are\u00a0deemed to be excessive. The initiative takes effect October 1st and will initially focus on 3\u00a0conditions: congestive heart failure, heart attack, and pneumonia.<\/p>\n
This may be a game-changer for assisted living and nursing facility providers who will\u00a0increasingly have to demonstrate their ability to safely prevent hospital readmissions. Those\u00a0who do will become preferred partners for Medicare discharges and gain a competitive edge\u00a0in markets where Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are active (not Oklahoma). As\u00a0subcontractors to ACOs, assisted living providers may, for the first time, become part of the\u00a0Medicare revenue stream.<\/p>\n
Assisted living communities are responding to the policy change with tools and methods to\u00a0better manage conditions associated with hospital readmissions. Strategies include installing\u00a0an electronic medical records system, enhancing staff levels and clinical capabilities, and\u00a0making renovations to accommodate new services and levels of care.<\/p>\n
Some assisted living providers are remodeling to offer short-stay units and 24-hour nursing\u00a0services in states with regulations allowing high levels of medical care. They are partnering with\u00a0therapy and home health care companies to provide more medical components. Health care\u00a0systems are transforming as more people are served in long-term and post-acute care settings\u00a0instead of a hospital. This pushing of acuity down the continuum of care is likely to become\u00a0even more pronounced as the government looks for ways to further reduce costs. Home-based\u00a0services will likely be more used as an alternative to long-term care.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Under the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, Medicare will withhold 1% of a hospital\u2019s\u00a0reimbursement rate for readmissions that take place within 30 days of a discharge and are\u00a0deemed to be excessive. The initiative takes effect October 1st and will initially focus on 3\u00a0conditions: congestive heart failure, heart attack, and pneumonia. This may be a game-changer for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/achievisseniorliving.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/achievisseniorliving.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/achievisseniorliving.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/achievisseniorliving.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/achievisseniorliving.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/achievisseniorliving.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/achievisseniorliving.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/achievisseniorliving.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/achievisseniorliving.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/achievisseniorliving.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}