Welcome to the second edition of our series, “The Impact Hospital Readmissions have on Hospitals and Ways that the Rehab Department Contributes”. The purpose of this series is to present the way that Hospital Rehab Solutions can optimize the performance of your hospital’s rehab department and why it is important to minimize hospital readmissions.

If you missed the first entry, you can read it here!

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To recap the first edition of the series:

A hospital’s rehabilitation department plays a crucial role in a hospital’s financial performance and reducing the readmission rate. The patient’s quality of care and discharge process affects the occurrence of unwanted cost and hospital penalties. Successfully delivering quality care and an effective discharge process will avoid unwanted costs and penalties for hospital readmission. A hospital should make sure to optimize their rehab department’s clinical operations and practices to decrease the occurrence of hospital readmissions and improve financial performance.

Not only does a high hospital readmission rate have a negative impact on the hospital financially, but a hospital’s readmission rate also contributes to the patient’s quality of life and overall health.

Part 2

In 2003, almost 20 percent of Medicare patients who were discharged from a hospital were readmitted within 30 days. The readmission rates declined from 21.5 percent in 2007 to 17.8 percent in 2015 for targeted conditions (i.e., a set of specific diagnoses measured by Medicare), and from 15.3 to 13.1 percent for non-targeted conditions. Decreasing the rate of hospital readmissions has been targeted as a high priority for United States health care reform to improve the patient’s health and quality of life post-discharge from a hospital. Communication and coordination are of utmost importance in the effort to reduce these readmissions.

Discharging patients from the hospital to the next level of care is a very complex process involving many healthcare professionals. Having a consistent and reliable participation of key clinical staff is essential.

There are two areas where the Rehabilitation Department can play a significant role:

Assessment of patients’ functional and cognitive status. 

To ensure a safe discharge and a restoration of health, the clinical team will need to decide on the most appropriate setting for ongoing care. There are many determinants that will impact this decision.

Input is needed from multiple sources to determine the most suitable discharge plan. Rehab Services through the Physical, Occupational, and Speech Therapy evaluations and assessments are in an excellent position to contribute by providing information on the patient’s functional and cognitive status that will be vital in their continued improvement and the selection of the next level of care.

Discharge education and communication. 

For patients receiving therapy services prior to discharge from the hospital, it’s very important that the therapists complete a discharge summary of the patient’s status and progress. This summary needs to be communicated effectively to the patient, family, and the healthcare professionals receiving the patient in the next setting. Successful therapy teams involved in the discharge planning process do a consistent job in completing patient instructions, teach back (to ensure understanding), and providing a written plan with a discharge checklist.

Now that you know the impact that hospital readmissions have on a patient’s health, it’s important to know what tactics to use to reduce these readmissions.

Optimizing your hospital rehab department’s clinical operations can be difficult. Having a strategic approach to identify best practices and areas of opportunities will be key to increase rehab’s impact in the hospital’s quality measures.

That’s where HRS can help. Hospital Rehab Solutions is all about optimizing the performance of your hospital’s rehabilitation department.

In addition to HRS’ operational and clinical expertise, we provide Insight, our proprietary software platform that monitors the key metrics of your rehab department like therapy KPIs, financial analysis, quality and compliance, rehab department targets, and client satisfaction. These metrics allow you to make strategic and tactical decisions to improve efficiency, reduce costs, increase access, and deliver best-in-class care to your patients.

Contact us today to set up a demo of our software, Insight, or to receive a Comprehensive Rehab Assessment to discover the ways that we can help you achieve the goals of your rehab department.

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