At some point in our lives—perhaps many points—we will pass through a long-term or post-acute care (LTPAC) facility. But these facilities are afterthoughts in our health care system, and were excluded in particular from the huge digitization of health care triggered in the United States by the 2009 HITECH act and 2010 Affordable Care Act.
In this video, you can hear about the technologies and regulations needed in LTPAC from Bill Charnetski, Executive Vice President, Health System Solutions and Government Affairs at PointClickCare.
Even though skilled nursing facilities, long-care homes and retirement facilities are highly regulated, Charnetski says that regulators don’t really understand the industry’s needs. CMS and ONC, long focuses on acute care, have tried to apply the lessons of acute care inappropriately to long-care facilities, or have just given the latter short shrift.
Technology would immensely benefit LTPAC by making more efficient use of their depleted staffs. Monitoring could also reduce readmissions and other costs. However, given that the facilities are already stretched to the breaking point in staffing and funding, they need outside incentives to install EHRs and other digital technologies.
The next step would be to achieve real interoperability in health records, a still elusive goal.
Listen to the video for historical reasons why LTPAC haven’t received the attention from regulators need, how to tailor incentives to the needs of public health care systems, comparisons of different countries, other regulations that would make LTPAC more effective, and whom PointClickCare is working with to help regulators make positive change.
Learn more about PointClickCare: https://pointclickcare.com/
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