Managing post-acute care cost

Medicare’s move towards bundling payment for acute and post-acute care means that hospitals have an incentive to carefully monitor care received after discharge.  But what are the key drivers of post-acute care cost: hospital readmissions? use of any post-acute care? type of post-acute care used? A paper by Huckfeldt et al. (2016) examines Medicare claims data…

Medicare Reimbursement for Outpatient Therapy

Today I review Medicare’s approach for paying for outpatient therapy visits. The content draws largely from CMS and MedPAC sources. What is outpatient therapy Outpatient therapy includes physical therapy (PT), occupational therapy (OT), and speech-language pathology (SLP) services. Who can provide outpatient therapy? Institutional Facilities Hospitals Skilled nursing facilities (SNF) Comprehensive outpatient rehabilitation facilities (CORF)…