Optimizing Laboratory Test Utilization in Long-Term Acute Care Hospitals

Long-term acute care hospitals.

Long-term acute care hospitals (LTACHs) are health care facilities that admit complex patients with acute care needs (eg, mechanical ventilator weaning, administration of intravenous antibiotics, and complex wound care) for a mean duration of stay of 25 days. LTACHs are different than nursing homes and were initially created in the 1990s in an effort to decrease Medicare costs by facilitating p...

Long-term acute care hospitals and Georgia Medicaid: Utilization, outcomes, and cost

OBJECTIVES Because most research on long-term acute care hospitals has focused on Medicare, the objective of this research is to describe the Georgia Medicaid population who received care at a long-term acute care hospital, the type and volume of services provided by these long-term acute care hospitals, and the costs and outcomes of these services. For those with select respiratory conditions,...

Long-term acute care hospital utilization after critical illness.

CONTEXT Long-term acute care hospitals have emerged as a novel approach for the care of patients recovering from severe acute illness, but the extent and increases in their activity at the national level are unknown. OBJECTIVE To examine temporal trends in long-term acute care hospital utilization after an episode of critical illness among fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 years ...

The Evolution of Long-term Care Programs; Comment on “Financing Long-term Care: Lessons From Japan”

The need for long-term care (LTC) represents a “new social risk,” one that overlaps with and complements systems of care that pre-date such programs, complicating LTC program design. This commentary expands on Ikegami’s discussion of how these structural factors must be accommodated, as well as historical and cultural factors that influence public expectations of such a...

Current Status of Long-term Care in Taiwan: Transition of Long-term Care Plan From 1.0 to 2.0