GENERAL MEDICINE AS A KEY REFERRAL SOURCE FOR POST-ACUTE AND LONG-TERM CARE FACILITIES
We have developed and maintain affiliations with Primary Care Providers and Hospitalists (the inpatient acute care attending physicians) who attend to patients' needs while in the community, and in the hospitals. These physicians do not follow residents in post-acute settings. We follow on their behalf.
Our Physician affiliates depend on us to provide post-acute and long-term care coverage for their patients. They know and appreciate that our qualified clinicians will collaborate with them, and immediately follow their patients when necessary. As a result, their patients are able to be admitted quicker to post- acute settings and receive excellent continuity of care. In addition, the post-acute facilities we work with are better able to care for the more medically complex resident because of our increased coverage.
Our Hospital affiliates are able to discharge their patients quicker and sicker, reduce their lengths of stay, and facilitate quicker placements by their discharge planners/social workers. Also, hospitals do not suffer from non-reimbursed re-admissions under the Medicare DRG system, and/or unnecessary ER visits because we manage the resident's medical needs in the post-acute setting.
As such, General Medicine has become a key source of referrals for selected nursing homes and post-acute facilities. How does this happen? Patients are referred specifically to a General Medicine physician to attend to their post-acute medical needs upon discharge from the hospital. We agree to follow their patients in selected facilities in each area where we provide our services. So, if we are following residents in a specific facility, the facility then will receive referrals from our affiliates. If not, families generally choose another facility in the area where General Medicine physicians and nurse practitioners do follow residents.
