Hospital referrals to nursing homes have doubled in early 2023 compared to last year, but rejection of admissions also increased – one reason being labor shortages.
This is according to WellSky, a leading health and community care technology company, which released its second annual Evolution of Care report this week. With higher demand for post-acute care services, acute providers are struggling to secure timely placements, leading to increased referrals sent per patient, the report notes.
“We’re entering a new era of care delivery and there is a dramatic shift happening in the healthcare landscape,” Lissy Hu, president of connected networks at WellSky, said in a press release. “Providers, whether it’s the hospital or the doctor’s office, and health plans need to be connected to post-acute and home-based providers as care shifts to home and value.”
Hu said that the data shows that what happens in the post-acute setting has a direct impact on the hospital setting and vice versa, and improving patient outcomes requires a holistic cross-continuum approach.
“As patient acuity increases, nursing homes and SNFs are a critical piece of the continuum for patients needing to recover,” she said. “Not all patients can recover appropriately at home, and using data based on millions of patient trajectories across the continuum can help us understand which patients should go to a SNF. SNFs can leverage technology that bridges them with hospitals and other parts of the continuum to reduce the calls and faxes so that care teams can spend more time with complex patients and less on administrative burdens.”
Hu added that enabling SNFs with great technology can allow them to responder quicker to referral requests, optimize the patient stay through the 360 cross-continuum patient view from analytics, and transition patients to another level of care.
Staffing issues have a significant impact on the healthcare industry as they can affect patient care, staff workload, and burnout, and contribute to facility capacity issues, she said. Staffing is particularly low in SNFs, with 87% of nursing homes facing moderate or high staffing shortages, she noted.
Hu said that with the end of the public health emergency (PHE), providers need to prepare for the changes in policy, practice, and waived requirements. Previously waived regulatory flexibilities regarding patient decision-making are now lifted, leading to a need for increased transparency and access to information for patients and their families when selecting post-acute care providers.
“The aftermath of the pandemic, combined with the financial climate and an increasing need for technology and data, will present new challenges and opportunities to achieve the best possible outcomes for patients,” said Hu.
Among other findings, the report highlighted that placing patients in post-acute care after hospital discharge remains challenging, with home health agencies (HHA) referral rejection rates hitting an all-time high. Meanwhile, referral volume to home health remains higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to the report.
The time patients spend in the hospital prior to discharge lessened from its peak during the pandemic, but is still higher than pre-pandemic levels. While improving since its peak in winter 2022, the average hospital length of stay (ALOS) before post-acute discharge has increased by approximately one day since 2019.
Increased hospital ALOS can lead to higher costs, as patients require more resources and care for each additional day they spend in the hospital. It can also lead to longer wait times and decreased patient satisfaction and access to care.
Companies featured in this article:
