Guest guest Posted October 8, 1998 Report Share Posted October 8, 1998 Interesting, ! In a grad. seminar a couple of years ago, a work group I was in evolved a wildly reactionary strategy... It revolved around the premise that home care, while it does get patients out of the hospital, is somewhat inefficient in that professional staff does a lot of traveling for relatively few patient contacts. Outpatient care requires the support of multiple additional providers' overhead. Hospitals want to vertically integrate (dominating the consumer's purchase of all health care related services.) As the insurors have forced hospital room rates down, then locked them in with HMO contracts and Medicare agreements, those cheap overnight rooms might start looking good. If the hospital has fixed physical plant costs and unused capacity (its supply curve is low) and now faces low case rate reimbursement in home health, it might become to the hospital's advantage to keep some of its patients a few extra days in a place where there are nurses to do b.i.d dressings, aides to do bathing, feeding, and personal care -- and of course, PTs to Stamp Out Disability! ..or at least get a bit more progress before heading to the house. That might actually eventually be less costly. Eventually, the patient does go home with home health visits, but they'll require fewer visits for the fixed case-rate reimbursement. A result might be to increase the use of the hospital's services. Just wanted to share that viewpoint... Dick Hillyer ______________________________________________________________________ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.