Rehab revamps programs for occupational patients
To retain its occupational rehab patients, who were bypassing outpatient rehab services, St. Francis Hospital's rehab department created a new business health services division to provide one-stop services for business and industry.
In recent years, patients who once received outpatient rehab services for six to eight weeks were undergoing acute treatment and returning to work. That meant St. Francis' rehab department was seeing occupational patients for short periods of time, or not at all, for traditional rehab services, says Cindy Kress, MS, director of business health services at the Greenville, SC, hospital.
"We saw that we were at the back end of the food chain and that we had to get out front or get left out," Kress says.
Now, with its expanded occupational rehab program, St. Francis gets patients as soon as they are injured and can treat them from day one. The new program benefits the hospital's bottom line by bringing in referrals for other services. "There will always be a need for rehab, and you can assure yourself that you're going to get that business if you're seeing the injuries upfront," she says.
In addition to providing acute injury care and rehab, St. Francis staff work with employers to determine the causes of injuries, whether jobs are suitable for employees, and how they can prevent injuries, Kress says. "We sort of backed into job analysis and ergonomic assessment. We can still bring in rehab patients, but we had to make a change in our programming to keep our patients. Employers were saying, `Send my people back to work,' and physicians were doing that," she says.
The financial benefits of occupational rehab trickle down to hospital-affiliated physician practices and ancillary services as well, adds Bill Munley, MHSA, CRA, administrator of rehabilitation and the rehab center's Vitality Center.
For instance, a workers' compensation case also can bring in business for X-ray, laboratory, and other ancillary services. If an injured worker is sent to a family practice physician affiliated with St. Francis, the worker may return for other medical care. "We look at the net effect it has on our system. It's not necessarily what comes directly to our clinic but what kind of influence we can have on referrals to the medical side or utilization of other services," Kress says.
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