Specialty Hospital Proposal Scrapped
By David Wenner, The Patriot-News, Harrisburg, Pa.
Jan. 22–Select Medical Corp. has decided not to open a specialty hospital in the former Villa Teresa nursing home in Dauphin County.
Instead, it will continue to operate a long-term, acute-care hospital in rented space at Holy Spirit Hospital in Cumberland County.
Carolyn Curnane, a spokeswoman for Select Medical, said the company wouldn’t discuss reasons for the change. She said the company doesn’t know what it will do with the former nursing home in Lower Paxton Twp. that it bought in 2006.
Long-term, acute-care hospitals, known as LTACs, care for severely ill patients who, because their conditions are stable, are no longer covered by their insurer or Medicare if they remain in a regular hospital. But such patients need more care than a nursing home can provide. They often need a ventilator to breathe and must later be weaned from the ventilator, or have wounds that require special care.
The average length of stay in LTACs is about 25 days.
The LTAC industry has grown significantly in the past decade, leading Medicare to become concerned about payments to such facilities and that some are taking patients who don’t need such expensive care.
Many LTACs are housed within a regular hospital — a “hospital within a hospital,” such as the Select Medical facility at Holy Spirit.
Under a 2007 rule, LTACs that receive more than 25 percent of their patients from a “host” hospital no longer receive full payment from Medicare. That impending change prompted Select Medical’s decision in 2006 to move to the former Villa Teresa facility.
The so-called “25 percent rule,” and additional reductions in Medicare payments, have made it difficult for LTACs to remain profitable, according to a Dec. 17 article in Modern Healthcare magazine. A Select Medical executive quoted in the article expressed his belief that Medicare wants to reduce or eliminate growth in the industry.
Select Medical, based in Cumberland County, operates about 90 specialty hospitals nationwide. Its 31-bed facility is on the fifth floor at Holy Spirit.
Holy Spirit spokeswoman Lori Moran said Select Medical plans to expand the area it occupies in the hospital.
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