The number of long-term care hospitals in the U.S. is falling fast.
According to hospital industry sources, more than a quarter of all long-term care hospitals – commonly referred to as LTCHs – have closed over the past decade.
Among the reasons for all the closings, according to those same sources, are low Medicare payments; Medicare site-neutral payment policies that limit the kinds of patients for which LTCHs can receive full, LTCH-level payments and not lower reimbursement; and the refusal of some Medicare Advantage plans to include LTCHs in their provider networks.
LTCHs traditionally provide acute-care services to patients who require long-term hospitalization, such as those suffering from organ failure, are dependent on ventilators, or have severe wounds. Under Medicare’s site-neutral payment system for post-acute care, the program pays the same rate for some of these services regardless of the setting in which they are provided – even if some of those facilities are not as qualified to provide the care in question.
Learn more about the challenges facing the LTCH industry and how that industry is responding to those challenges from the Axios article “Hospitals that take the sickest patients are closing.”