MResult Healthcare Insights

As a follow up to last week’s post on bundled payments, here is a link to an interesting policy paper from the National Institute for Health Care Reform that discusses the ins and outs of a bundled payment plan based on Episodes of Care. Many issues to address, including

• What should constitute an episode of care?
• Striking the right balance between financial incentives and risks
• Adjusting payments based on case mix and quality
• Strategies for phased implementation

As mentioned before, bundling brings both pros and cons. But if post care facilities are going to be compensated based on pre-defined services tied to specific diagnosis, they’ll need to be sure they have in place systems to ensure that those diagnosis are correct.

Episode-Based Payments: Charting a Course for Health Care Payment Reform

Jason Greis is a health care attorney who writes on industry news and legislation pertaining to LTACHs. He has an interesting take on the question of Acute-Care and Post-Acute Care Payment Bundling and some of the potential unintended consequences this could bring about.

We’re interested from the standpoint of admission criteria. If acute care hospitals are going to be responsible for managing post acute placement then its more critical than ever that the admitting criteria for different post acute care venues be clearly defined, and the lines of communication between acute and post acute care facilities be as open as possible.

Exploring the Potential Benefits and Drawbacks of Acute-Care and Post-Acute Care Payment Bundling by way of GreisGuide to LTACHs

Interesting article from Today’s Hospitalist discussing different hospital’s attempts to streamline the discharge process. One physician quoted in the article likens a hospital stay to a flight on an airplane … “very exciting at the beginning and very exciting at the end.”

In most cases, steps taken to improve the process are strait-forward and emphasize simple things like checklists and better communication. Boston Medical Center went so far as to create a detailed process map prior to re-engineering their entire flow. As always, technology is the enabler for process improvements, not the improvements themselves.

Does your discharge process need fine-tuning? via Today’s Hospitalist.