Coordinating Complex Medicare Part A Patient Care in a SNF

Managing the care of the patient on a daily basis is very challenging in the SNF. Medicare Part A patients who tend to be somewhat more medically complex and sicker than some of the other patients residing in the nursing home are more complex to manage. One helpful technique that Kris B Harmony has seen during facility visits is utilizing an individualized patient calendar. Each patient carries their own calendar which will list when the patient is scheduled for physical or occupational therapy. If the patient has a physician visit scheduled within the facility, is going to be transported off site to go to a medical appointment, or some other type of a visit- it will be recorded. This helps the team to be able to plan for care, arrange when to schedule therapy, or note if nursing requires the patient for a particular period of time, such as a wound treatment that needs to occur. This will enable the team to view the patients day at a glance and be able to schedule if you have to perform an interview for the MDS, how to avoid missing a day of treatment if therapy is looking to manage for minimizing change of therapy, or end of therapy assessments. The patient calendar is a strategy that Kris B Harmony believes can be very helpful, especially if you run a Medicare Census that is upward of 20 maybe 30 patients you are managing a day. We challenge you to employ the individualized patient schedule and see how it works. Try it with a portion of your patient case load and note if this will make a difference in helping to avoid doing some of the unscheduled assessments that can arise while you are managing their day to day treatments and appointments.