This article was written in the McKnight’s Long-Term Care News website by Kimberly Marselas on March 22, 2021.
Read the article in full by visiting the McKnight’s Long-Term Care News website: https://www.mcknights.com/news/with-key-resources-at-the-ready-speciality-providers-have-done-well-amid-covid-19/
Most of long-term care has found itself hobbled by low occupancy and consumers’ sustained fears during the pandemic, but one group has generally fared much better than the others: Providers focusing on intense rehabilitation and transitional care.
That’s largely because they were able to demonstrate their value to upstream providers in need of reliable outlets for step-down patients.
The trend toward targeting clinically complex patients is nothing new, but observers say the continued push toward payment incentives that unite payers and providers around risk — plus ongoing, specific needs related to COVID-19 — have hastened the transformation.
“There’s no question,” said Bob Kramer, co-founder and former CEO of the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care. “Specialized clinical programs working in conjunction with health systems … are seeing real pick-up and real demand of a sort they weren’t before.”
Kramer, who last year founded Nexus Insights to help develop new aging services models, calls this sub-sector “peri-acute” care, likening it to a protective moat around the castle that is acute care.
Just before COVID-19, Allaire Health Services served a mix of rehab patients, medically complex conditions ranging from traumatic brain injury to congestive heart failure and long-term care residents at four facilities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Amenities include private suites and gleaming rehab gyms. Respiratory therapists and wound care specialists direct therapies using equipment more commonplace in hospitals.
Over the last year, Allaire’s emphasis on clinical staffing and subacute recovery became a lifesaver — both for patients who would continue to fill beds throughout much of the last year and for the business itself. By early this year, Allaire had added a facility each in New Jersey, New York and Vermont. Pennsylvania health officials also tapped Allaire to run a facility overrun by COVID-19.
Read the article in full by visiting the McKnight’s Long-Term Care News website: https://www.mcknights.com/news/with-key-resources-at-the-ready-speciality-providers-have-done-well-amid-covid-19/