Hospital Navigates Care To Hotel in Wisconsin

Remember part of the health system change is federal pay sources (The Centers For Medicare and Medicaid) adjusting admission criteria that requires the patient to be severely ill to stay in the hospital.  If you are not admitted you are not going to be part of a hospital readmission.  Acuity is being pushed down the continuum of care. 

Individuals presenting to the hospital with exacerbating disease symptoms, may be in need of help but hospital assessments do not indicate eligibility for an admission to the hospital.  The persons symptoms are no longer tolerable but their level of manifestation does not qualify for a hospital stay. 

This leaves hospital care coordinators in a new area of practise.  The individual is too ill to safely go home but not sick enough to be a hospital inpatient.  The individual needs to be seen by an outpatient specialty provider housed within the Health (Hospital) Care Center.   How does the care coordinator avoid the hospitalization but conect the person to the specialty provider.  This reduces the risk of hospital readmission while preserving the revenue flow through attachment of the person to a specialty provider.

The answer for one Madison Wisconsin hospital is to buy a hotel to house outpatients.  The patient would pay privately (room and board) for the hotel stay.  Hospital staff will supplement  the hotel stay with education.  The hotel is close enough to the hospital to facilitate an admission if the patients symptoms worsen. 

The hotel is now a hospital owned facility with an accelerated placement on the social services department outpatient resource referral list.   The Doctor would like you to pay to stay in our hotel as an outpatient and we can serve you as the outpatient specialty providers schedule allows. 

This is one Wisconsin hospital groups strategy to reduce hospital readmssion rates.  Home Care Path www.homecarepath.com encourages seniors to watch this change at the hospital level as it unfolds.