Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

The approach reduced rehospitalization and helps position the organization to become an ACO. Healthcare organizations looking to reduce their rate of skilled nursing facility patient rehospitalizations -- and tap a new market of higher acuity SNF patients -- might consider taking notes from Providence St. Joseph Care Center, which is part of Providence Healthcare, a multiprovider system that includes two hospitals. The organization's SNF has accomplished those goals and more by hiring an adult nurse practitioner (ARNP) full-time and a medical doctor part-time, both of whom are hospitalists, says Sally Denton, RN, executive director/administrator of the center in Spokane, Wash. The primary reason for making the change, says Denton, was to decrease hospital readmissions and emergency department transfers. The ability to manage higher acuity patients is an "additional benefit." Having the hospitalists available has decreased the number of SNF patients "with revolving hospital readmissions that were unnecessary or frivolous," says Denton. "By [...]