Articles

Originally published on McKnight's on July 29, 2024. As CMS continues to drive all Medicare patients into value-based care programs by 2030, it is imperative for nursing facilities to begin developing innovative strategies to adopt value-based care initiatives that will improve facility performance, occupancy, and revenues. In this must-attend webinar, McKnight's Long-Term Care News Executive Editor James M. Berklan recently sat down with Scott Rifkin, MD, founder and executive chairman of Real Time Medical Systems (Real Time), to discuss how nursing facilities can deploy key strategies that enable them to become a preferred provider with Accountable Care Organizations, as well...read more

This article was originally featured in Healthcare IT Today. Bridging the data gap between acute care and post-acute care is a significant challenge. However, more and more evidence suggests that sharing the right information from acute care with post-acute care settings, like Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs), leads to remarkable outcomes that benefit acute care providers, SNFs, and most importantly, the patient. While it may seem obvious that sharing data between these organizations is beneficial, there is now concrete evidence to support its value. We first highlighted some of these benefits in our previous article, The Value of Bridging the Data...read more

A recent study of skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) in the American Journal of Managed Care finds that using interventional analytics to prevent hospital readmissions can potentially save Medicare nearly $2.8 billion dollars in annual spending. Hospital readmissions come at a cost to members, health plans, and health systems, representing a significant challenge for SNFs. Of the 1.7 million SNF admissions in the United States annually, more than 20% result in hospital readmissions within 30 days, leading to roughly $5.2 billion dollars in Medicare costs. Findings from the retrospective analysis of the 30-day hospital readmission rates between 2017 and 2022 indicate that SNFs equipped...read more

This article was originally featured in Healthcare IT Today. When acute care providers look at hospital readmissions, it is natural to think about what is being done once the patient is discharged. However, what many forget is that a large portion of patients are discharged to a post-acute facility. In order for post-acute care teams to address things like readmissions and length of stay (LOS), it is essential for acute care providers to create collaborative relationships with their post-acute partners. This includes sharing of data between organizations. Plus, this need is even more apparent when an acute care organization is...read more