[Blog] Preferred Skilled Nursing Facility Networks: How do you measure up?

It’s no secret the Affordable Care Act has greatly changed the healthcare landscape. It’s become a value-based industry with financial penalties and incentives involving 33 quality metrics, including hospital readmission rates. As a result, many accountable care organizations (ACO) have recognized the need to partner with post-acute care facilities to ensure quality of care is maintained throughout a patient’s entire treatment. They understand the valuable roll skilled nursing facilities (SNF) play in supporting patient transitions.

In order to ensure their patients are treated by the most effective SNF, many hospitals are establishing Preferred Skilled Nursing Facility Network partnerships. While each hospital or ACO will have its own criteria, here are some of the things they examine when creating their Preferred SNF Networks:  high quality of care, effective communication, and current technology.

Here’s an overview of the top criteria ACOs look for in SNFs:

• High quality of care
  Many ACOs require SNFs to have a CMS three-star rating or higher. The reason is simple. Proactive treatment in the rehab process and good risk management help prevent unnecessary hospital readmissions. 

• Effective communication
  It’s all about transparency, collaboration, and open communication with providers throughout a patient’s entire treatment. ACOs want to know how their patients are doing and be apprised of any changes to their conditions.
  

• Current technology
  Electronic medical records (EMR) and adequate data security are an essential part of sharing patient status with providers. ACOs want to work with SNFs who are able to easily share and protect pertinent patient information.

ACOs are a key driver of referrals for many SNFs. The financial risk is extremely high for any acute or post-acute care provider who doesn’t become part of a preferred SNF network.

You may find that our primeVIEW business performance dashboard for long-term care can help ensure your SNF maintains the high-quality of care expected by ACO/other networks. Its real-time snapshots of integrated data allows SNFs to proactively monitor performance around census, staffing, AR, clinical, financial, five star rating and more.

Resources:

• Hospitals create preferred networks for post-acute care
• Accountable Care Organizations and Skilled Nursing Facilities:  What Providers Should Know