Assisted living could be a new source of rehab patients
Hospital proposes CORF in senior housing
A relationship with assisted living facilities can be quite beneficial to acute care providers, says David Mungenast, president and chief executive officer at Southwest Rehabilitation Hospital in Battle Creek, MI, and a principal of CHI consulting, an Ann Arbor, MI, health care consulting firm.
Traditionally, assisted living and congregate living facilities are limited in the health care interventions they are able or willing to provide. This creates opportunities for health care providers who are willing to deliver on-site services, Mungenast says. (For more on providing home health services in assisted living centers, see related article on p. 80.)
These opportunities include expanding services into the community without capital expenditures, becoming provider of choice for the residents who no longer have to travel for rehab services, and further serving your elderly patient population.
Mungenast's hospital has hopes of setting up a Comprehensive Outpatient Rehab Facility (CORF) to serve residents of a proposed assisted living center and the surrounding community.
Their proposal calls for the developer of the assisted living center to set aside space for health care services. If Southwest Rehab gets the contract, it would rent the space, provide staff, and manage the health care services.
In addition to comprehensive rehab services on site, Southwest is considering offering exercise classes, nursing education, health maintenance activities, and other programs directed at the health care needs of the elderly.
"From our perspective, it allows us to continue to expand the services we provide to the elderly community. From a purely business perspective, it is a new business line in a setting where we automatically become the provider of choice," Mungenast says.
Assisted living centers are facilities that provide private rooms, housekeeping, dietary services, transportation for medical care, and other activities of daily living support for senior citizens who are unable to live independently on their own.
A committee of Battle Creek community leaders and health care providers also has proposed developing a congregate living center that provides meals and a few services for more independent senior citizens. As a member of the committee, Mungenast has persuaded the citizen's group to provide more health care services than initially planned. (For more about the committee, see related article on p. 80.)
In the past, assisted living centers haven't provided much in terms of health care, but Mungenast sees them as an opportunity for business for rehab and other health care providers.
Mungenast advises his consulting clients not to overlook the opportunity to develop the kind of partnerships with assisted living centers that they have developed with skilled nursing facilities.
The arrangement can be of mutual benefit to the residents and to the rehab provider, he adds.
"One of the great advantages of assisted living and congregate living arrangements is that it gives us a venue to help a large population with health maintenance issues. It's difficult to do this when you have to bring in individual people scattered throughout the community," Mungenast says.
"For instance, the hospital's classes at the local senior citizens' center don't always attract the number of people needed to make it worthwhile to bring staff to the site," Mungenast says.
The hospital charges a small fee for exercise classes and health screenings. When only four or five people show up, it's not a financially feasible project, he adds. With a ready-made audience, it's easier to set up classes and other services.
On-site rehab providers also have an advantage in becoming the provider of choice for residents.
"If your people are on site and interacting on a daily basis, when patients have an injury or illness, you have an advantage in providing the therapy services they need," Mungenast says.
The incentive to use Southwest Rehab's services would be even more powerful because the elderly residents would not have to travel to an outpatient facility across town, he adds.
"As an outpatient provider, we recognize that the biggest obstacle elderly patients have is transportation. Some don't come for follow-up services because transportation is such a struggle," he says.
Mungenast anticipates that the CORF would serve as a satellite facility for the hospital, serving other community populations as well as the residents of the assisted living centers.
It's an opportunity for Southwest Rehab to set up an off-campus facility without any capital expenditures in an area that is more accessible to people in the community than the outpatient program at the hospital.
For more information, contact David Mungenast at (616) 965-3206.
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