LTAC HOSPITAL CORPORATION

What is a Long Term Acute Care Hospital?

The Long Term Acute Care or LTAC Hospital is a hybrid between the acute care hospital and the skilled nursing facility. It is a fully licensed acute care hospital. Not a skilled nursing facility. LTAC It typically focuses on the medically complex patient and includes multiple specialty programs to care for the long-term patient population.

Specialty programs are designed to meet the needs of long-term, acutely ill patients. These patients have conditions ranging from ventilator-dependent respiratory failure, chronic pulmonary problems, complex and severe wounds, infections requiring long-term antibiotic therapy, to conditions requiring continued life support, nutritional therapies, and pain control.

The average length of stay for these patients is about 30 days.

What is a Hospital within a Hospital? (Back To Top)

A hospital within a hospital or HIH allows for a freestanding hospital to be licensed inside another hospital known as the host facility.

Host facilities are typically facilities that have a closed wing or floor that is unoccupied, thus creating overhead for the under-utilized areas. The host hospital will provide leased space and ancillaries to the LTAC unit by way of contract.
This approach utilizes pre-existing hospital space and services, making the HIH operationally efficient with minimal or no construction costs. Additionally, the host may supply equipments, further reducing the cost associated with opening a new hospital.
Regulations established by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), require LTAC Hospitals to have a separate governing body, medical staff, chief medical officer, and chief executive officer.

LTAC HIH is a separate, fully licensed, and staffed hospital to provide intensive and complex medical treatment. LTAC HIH is more than just a tenant of the host hospital. Typically of the physicians on the medical staff of LTAC HIH are also on the medical staff of the host hospital.

What are the benefits of a hospital within a hospital?

For The Hospital:

A discharge option for acutely ill, medically complex patients whose average length of stay is about 30 days.
Gives the host hospital an opportunity for revenue enhancement through out-sourcing of ancillary services.
Provides a continuum of care that the hospital can provide its patients and physicians, and a secondary marketing advantage for their own facility.

For The Patients:

Provides highly specialized long-term acute care for the medically complex and critically ill patients.
Provides easy access to long-term acute care and reduces the difficulties associated with transfer to another hospital.
Provides continuity of care for the patients.

For The Physicians (Back To Top)

Continuity of patients care allows physicians to manage their patients that are transferred from the host hospital
Provides specialized long-term acute care in the same building with other host hospital services.
Provides physicians the convenience of caring for their patients at a long-term acute care hospital without leaving the host hospital building.

For The Payors:

Provides a cost effective specialized long-term acute care alternative to an extended stay in an acute care hospital.
Provides specialty programs that contribute to positive outcomes.
Provides case management and multidisciplinary team management approach that contributes to the satisfaction of both patients and their families.

Frequently Asked Questions