Eli's Rehab Report
Learn More About Proposed Changes for IRFs
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Get on-the-ground insight on IRF-PAI and quality reporting changes.
Medicare’s 2015 proposed rule for inpatient rehabilitation facilities is looking to create a new therapy information section on the IRF-PAI that tracks therapy minutes for individual, group, and co-treatments.
“This requirement will be similar to the current SNF requirement, and will allow for consistent definitions of the types of therapy provided by IRFs,” notes Julie Bantle, MA, OTR/L, executive director of inpatient rehab at St. John’s Mercy Rehabilitation Center in St. Louis, MO. “Eventually, we will see requirements in terms of the type of therapy provided, particularly limiting the amount of group therapy provided in the IRF setting,” Bantle predicts.
Definitions: Group therapy (as proposed by CMS) would be 2-6 patients under the direction of a rehab therapist (or supervised therapy assistant), with patients doing either the same or different activities. Co-treatment would be more than one rehab therapist (or supervised therapy assistant) from different therapy disciplines working with a single patient simultaneously.
“This change would create an additional burden on facilities to provide this information and may require facilities to develop systems to input this information into the IRF-PAI,” Bantle says.
Plus: CMS has proposed to add more quality measures for 2015: Staphlococcus aureus and Clostridium difficile.
Although an infection control nurse would be the primary person in charge of this quality measure, “therapists would play a role in helping prevent the spread of these types of infections in their facilities, primarily through hand hygiene and other infection prevention measures,” Bantle pointed out.
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