Here is the latest news from the Special Board Meeting of the Garfield County Hospital District Board of Commissioners’ held on Tuesday, December 17, 2019. The focus of the meeting was to listen to a presentation from Allevant Solutions, a program that promotes post-acute transitional care utilizing the Swing Bed programs in critical access hospitals (CAH) for patients who are discharging from other facilities. This system was develop by the Mayo Clinic and was presented by Mark Lindsay, MD, who is the Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and serves as Medical Director for Allevant. Jordan Tenenbaum, MHA, serves as the Executive Vice President and Monica Bourgeau, MS, Vice President and Business Deployment of Allevant Solutions also presented information.

Transitional care is quickly becoming one of the highest value equations in healthcare. Dr. Lindsay and his team have worked with many struggling rural hospitals that have experienced low census and financial challenges in a smaller population setting, much like Pomeroy’s, and in some cases worse, all who have seen a significant increase in their revenue because of this program. Allevant’s goal is to create the hospital to become a destination post-acute center for local community and surrounding populations. With the branding of the Mayo Clinic, our facility would be on the preferred list for complex medical and surgical cases referred which is a win for acute care hospitals, CAHs and most importantly patients. Transitional care is all about the patient and provides a highly skilled team. Allevant offers on-site training for nursing staff for higher acuity patients.

“Transitional Care, expanding swing bed program in critical access hospitals is one of the greatest quality and business case opportunities in healthcare, says Dr. Lindsay.” The two most common hospital –based post-acute care models and CAH-based transitional care were compared. Inpatient Rehab and Long Term Acute Care both offer narrow admission criteria, limited daily therapy, and very small percentage of patients qualify. Whereas the CAH-Based Transactional Care offers board admission criteria, 3-day acute care stay and skilled post-acute care needs identified, on-site providers to address acute change of condition, and on-site lab, radiology services and with daily high nurse ratio hours.

Financially Allevant has a 97% reimbursement capture on the hospital’s cost report. Allevant experience in growing the Swing Bed Program in rural hospitals has a very high success rate. They have benefited virtually every hospital that has used their program. There is a tremendous impact cost opportunity on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS). Medicare pays acute care hospitals an IPPS payment on a per inpatient case or per inpatient discharge basis. Allevant offers three different Transitional Care (TC) Program Options: Comprehensive TC, Core TC, and Measurement & Reporting TC, and the costs vary from $10,000 a month to $4,000 a month.

The GCHD Board has requested that the discussion be tabled until the regular Board Meeting in January at which time more specific detailed information can be obtained.