How long term care hospital can cope to some hospital admission issues?

Hospitals to be certified as acute care hospitals must meet some certain criteria under the Medicare program and must have an inpatient length of stay beyond 25 days (on the average). Long-term care hospitals (LTCHs) generally provides continued medical and rehabilitative care to people who are diagnosed as clinically complex and those with multiple chronic or acute conditions. The LTCHs' effectiveness to providing long-term care is attributed to its interdisciplinary team.

Since November 2001, around 270 facilities were recognized by the Medicare program. Also, on 22 March 2002, a proposed rule has been issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to establish a prospective payment system between LTCHs and CMS.

Acute care hospitals

The hospital is basically the ideal place where acute care can be effectively provided. Acute care involves the necessary treatment or cure of an illness done in a short period of time. But as soon as a patient recovers and becomes health again, discharge from the hospital will immediately be processed.

Characterized by the specialized and integrated services available, the hospital is urgency-oriented and -motivated. Also, it is where critical medical decisions are made. Often, it is when a person's disease has come to worse or crisis that leads to hospital admission. Such situation may be prevented if long term care or health care providers (e.g., long term care nurse, skilled social worker) have least taken necessary actions or prevention against further complication. Moreover, it is due to the lack of preparation or availability of service from outside the hospital that cause many unforeseen deaths in the hospital.

A sudden rate for admissions among adults for general medical services for instance, is due to problems in managing symptoms and failing to provide palliative care. Long term care or health care providers (e.g., long term care nurse, skilled social worker) should have taken care of these things before hospital admission. The hospital is simply caught off guard.

Continuation of care among recognized long term care hospitals poses to be a challenge. Long term care or health care providers (e.g., long term care nurse, skilled social worker) must be sure to systematically identify and prevent disease or illness from getting worse least before hospital admission. Likewise, it will also be helpful to coordinate with the hospital prior to admission schedule. In this way, the hospital can have enough time to prepare appropriate facilities and necessary palliative care. This is can be a sensible measure to prevent the hospital from always getting caught off guard. Otherwise, these may only lead to unfortunate deaths that would have been prevented in the first place.