According to Tim Mullaney, editor, Senior Housing News, a proposal from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to phase out a list of inpatient-only hospital procedures threatens skilled nursing facility (SNF) access if the so-called three-day stay rule is not eliminated, and also should prompt bigger thinking about the role SNFs can and should play in the U.S. health care system.
That’s according to comments that LeadingAge, which represents more than 5,400 nonprofit providers and other organizations, recently submitted to CMS.
At the RETHINK Conference, Joel Theisen, Lifespark CEO, and Joseph Kiernan, Chief Strategy Officer and Senior Vice President Network Development at Ocean Healthcare, argued that enabling direct admissions to SNFs is a logical step in this evolution of the hospital-SNF relationship.
Indeed, the need for a qualifying hospital stay for SNF coverage is contributing to a cycle in which older adults with multiple comorbidities continuously migrate among care settings, which compromises their quality of life and drives up costs.
“They don’t have to go to the hospital, they don’t need to go to the ER, get reworked up, go into the floor, get all messed up, and then pop out two weeks later into the SNF, right? Just go right to the SNF where you know them, know what their deal is,” Theisen said at RETHINK.
