Timely and safe discharges are more important than ever in today’s healthcare world, but an increase in complex patients makes creating a discharge plan a challenge.
The changes in healthcare reimbursement and the increase in patients with complex needs and inadequate or no funding have created a huge workload for case managers and social workers.
Every case management leader should be educating their teams on how to deal with complex and difficult-to-discharge patients so the case managers will know what to do when they face a specific issue.
When NYC Health+Hospitals’ acute care hospitals and post-acute facilities began collaborating in a pilot project, they were able to place challenging patients in the appropriate level of care — a program that is on track to save the public hospital system $3.5 million per year when it is rolled out systemwide.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services proposed sweeping changes in three bundled payment initiatives, and tweaked some of the pay-for-performance measures that affect hospital reimbursement.
Hospitals can make significant headway in reducing readmissions by addressing high-needs patients, according to a new National Academy of Medicine special publication, which notes that nearly half of the nation’s spending on healthcare is driven by just 5% of patients.
