How to Increase Occupancy with Smooth Transitions

As the challenges of the pandemic continue to weigh heavily on senior care facilities, providers are turning their focus to developing the skills and processes necessary to implement coordination of care across the continuum to combat the challenges they face on a daily basis. Last year, elective surgeries were put on hold and Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNF) occupancy rates decreased. Now, as SNF’s continue to receive vaccines and COVID rates decrease, they are able to once again focus on ensuring they are getting the right patients for their organization. But it is important to recognize that things have changed and SNFs need adjust as well. Pre-covid strategies and processes won’t provide the same results, and SNFs need to find a way to better coordinate care. That’s why we’re here. PointClickCare is uniquely positioned to provide facilities with the tools they need to streamline transitions of care.  

Seamless Transitions  

At the forefront of this challenge is the need to improve the coordination processes between facilities, hospitals, and any other health care provider. Gathering all the right information and sharing it with the appropriate teams prior to admission is critical. The problem is, patients are constantly moving across the care continuum, increasing their touch points of care as they progress and oftentimes there is a disconnect in the way information travels with them. Medication errors are also a constant challenge for SNFs and not having access to the correct medications can lead to readmissions. In order to avoid that, facilities need one simple thing: visibility. With the right information in front of you, such as medical history, diagnosis, and medications of every patient coming out of the hospital prior to admission, providers can determine the right level of care and prevent an unnecessary readmission.  

Proving Outcomes & Gaining Insights 

As elective surgeries pick up again, SNFs need to be able to show their value to be a preferred partner and drive occupancy. Furthermore, with a shift to value-based payment models, hospital providers are looking for partners that can provide quality care and prevent unnecessary readmissions, including the additional costs associated with them. A study*, found that approximately 3.3 million adult 30-day all-cause readmissions took place in the U.S., with an associated $41.3 billion in hospital costs. To reduce this number, hospitals became more selective with their partnerships, which meant facilities needed a way to stand out amongst their peers. Facilities can do this by using key insights to drive conversations with their network partners and prove the quality of their outcomes. Understanding their referral partners patient dynamics, hospital core strengths, and discharge needs will allow facilities to show their worth and meet the needs of referral partner. Furthermore, by leveraging meaningful data to understand how a facility is performing, when it is not performing well, and how to put an action plan in place to align to overall goals, providers will prove their value and build a strong relationship with their network. 

Census and Billing 

Getting heads in beds is no longer the goal of the admission department. Facilities must understand their ideal census mix, assess patients, and determine if they can efficiently care for them with the reimbursement they will be receiving. To do this, providers need a way to quickly and accurately verify coverage so they can communicate to the hospital if they will accept the patient or not. In the end, achieving the ideal census mix financially requires facilities to have the right payor information prior to admission, allowing them to properly calculate the costs to provide the best care possible for the patient. 

How PointClickCare Can Help 

The truth is smooth transitions isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. There are many working parts and different requirements across the continuum of care that need to be accounted for and they all need to work together. That’s where we come in. PointClickCare is committed to providing the senior care community with the tools they need to solve the most pressing issues.  

*For more information on the 2011 study referenced, please click here.