What Is an LTAC Hospital?
A long-term acute care hospital is an acute care hospital that specializes in the treatment and rehabilitation of medically complex patients who require an extended stay in a hospital setting.
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When a family is trying to decide which post-acute care setting a family member should go to — a nursing home, a long-term acute care hospital, or a rehabilitation center — there is one basic question: Does the patient’s care need to be directed by a physician (in a long-term acute care hospital), by a nurse (in a nursing facility), or by a rehabilitation team (in a rehabilitation hospital)? If a patient needs a doctor every day — one who is available at all times — the patient needs to be in a long-term acute care hospital.
Our patients come from a variety of healthcare settings, but about 95% come from short-term acute care hospitals. Our patients have a large variety of complicated medical conditions, occurring at the same time. Those patients usually end up in a short-term acute care hospital before they come to Kindred.
Kindred hospitals have licensure, accreditation and certification to the same standard as any community or university hospital.
An Interdisciplinary Team Approach to Care
The interdisciplinary team is made up of clinicians who have a responsibility in the patient's recovery. It's led by the attending physician and includes nurses, pharmacists, nutritionists, occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists, as well as physical therapists. These seven or eight people set goals, mark progress and coordinate the care so the patient’s outcome can be as good as it possibly can be.
Our patients are as sick as patients in short-term acute care hospitals. However, our goals are different: In the short-term acute care hospitals, the goal is to stabilize the patient day-to-day. In the long-term acute care hospitals, the interdisciplinary team's job is to identify the medical conditions, formulate a treatment plan, set reasonable goals and coordinate everyone's interests around meeting those goals. Those goals are not simply to get the patient through the night, but to work toward improvement over the long term.
When a Kindred Long-Term Acute Care Hospital Is the Right Choice
The fundamental question is, "Is the best place for me as a patient in a hospital where people like me make up only one or two percent of the patients? Or is it in a place that is filled with people just like me, with a large burden of illness with a lot of complexity?" At Kindred long-term acute care hospitals, the staff can look at their patients or loved ones and say, "I recognize this type of patient, I know what to do, I know how they're different, how they're unique, and how they're special."
This is what we do. We can provide for our patients and their loved ones what they need: hope, healing and recovery.
Licenses and Certifications
- LTACs are licensed as acute care or specialty hospitals
- LTACs are certified by Medicare as long-term care hospitals
- LTACs are reimbursed by Medicare under a PPS/DRG system
- The Joint Commission is the accrediting agency for LTAC hospitals
Patient Services
- daily physician visits
- nursing
- respiratory therapy
- physical, occupational and speech-language therapies
- nutritional therapy
- case management and social services
- laboratory, radiology and pharmacy
- telemetry
- dialysis
- pain management
- family interventions
- end-of-life care