Anyone who suffers from a severe and sudden illness or injury will likely end up in acute care. Treatments used for diagnosing and stabilizing patients in acute situations can take a toll on the body. Patients coming out of the hospital after these incidents often need rehabilitation and other services to return to normal, which is where post-acute care comes in.
A post-acute care team consists of speech therapists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and others who help patients regain their mobility or cognitive function or help them adapt to their reality following a traumatic surgery or illness.
Skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) play a key role in post-acute care, offering patients a wider range of services than at home. SNFs in healthcare provide vital rehabilitation services that can help reduce a patient’s chances of being readmitted to the hospital.
Learn more about skilled nursing and post-acute care along with tools you can use to improve patient care at your facility.
What Defines Post-Acute Care and How SNFs Fit In
Post-acute care refers to any rehabilitation or palliative services a patient receives after a hospital stay for an acute event. Depending on the severity, patients can receive post-acute care at a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care hospital, an inpatient rehabilitation center, or at home.
Skilled nursing facilities offer more services than outpatient and home-based post-acute care facilities. Your patients often have complex needs and require 24-hour attention and therapy services.
Medicare defines skilled nursing as therapy that only skilled professionals or technical personnel can perform. To qualify for Medicare’s post-acute benefits, your patient must have spent at least three days in the hospital and they must be admitted to your facility within 30 days of their hospital stay. Your patient’s doctor also needs to determine that the patient needs skilled care.
The Key Difference Between SNFs and Other Post-Acute Options
Patients have a variety of post-hospital care options. Doctors usually recommend skilled nursing to patients who need more care than they can get at home, but not at the level of inpatient therapy or a long-term hospital. Your patients are typically those who’ve had a stroke or heart attack, a brain or spinal cord injury, or orthopedic surgery. But you might also treat people who have suffered from severe burns or organ transplants.
An SNF provides 24-hour monitoring and treatment of patients. Your caregivers help patients regain mobility and speech, provide other therapies, and administer medications. You may also aid patients in everyday tasks, such as dressing, showering, and eating.
A document management system such as WorldView’s Mobile Complete, which takes advantage of healthcare AI, can help you offer superior patient care by helping you manage patient referrals, onboarding forms, and medical records with one solution. Your team can quickly assess a patient and start the treatment plan.
Common Challenges for SNFs in Delivering Post-Acute Care
As a post-acute facility, you are often dealing with complex patient documentation including medical records and healthcare referrals. Since your patients need a referral for Medicare payments, you have to keep detailed records. You are also coordinating with physicians and other providers to treat your patients, so you need to consolidate complex medical records.
Rehabilitation after hospitalization requires coordinated care. This is most effective when every member of the team can access patient records in real time. If your patient’s electronic documentation isn't up to date, you risk missing signs that could indicate your patient might end up back in the hospital. You also need to track physician orders and care plans so you can start treatment right away without duplicating tests and other diagnostic tasks.
WorldView’s Physician Order Tracking solution makes it easy to submit orders for approval without processing them manually. You can also check the status of each order for seamless patient care. Our Referral AI tool scans documents for errors to give you accurate referral packets for each patient.
How WorldView Supports SNFs in the Post-Acute Landscape
WorldView solutions such as MedAttach and Mobile Complete help you process skilled nursing documentation faster so your team can focus on patient care instead of paperwork. You can easily capture and upload documents and attach them to bills and electronic medical records.
Your care team always has access to the latest information to treat patients, and your administrative team doesn’t have to consolidate piles of paperwork. You can also stay in compliance with Medicare and other regulations with a clear paper trail for each patient.
Conclusion: The Vital Role of SNFs in Recovery and Quality of Life
Anyone who suffers an acute event needs help recovering and returning to business as usual through skilled nursing facilities and post-acute care services. Your role in SNF patient management is vital in providing specialized support to patients in recovery. These cases often involve multiple providers and patients with complex medical histories.
The right technology can help you effectively treat patients by making physician orders and intake more efficient. WorldView’s solutions let you know you always have the right electronic documents to get paid for your services quickly. You can also spend more time treating patients and less time pushing paper.
Schedule a demo to see how WorldView’s solutions can help your SNF deliver high-quality post-acute care.
