With nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities and other downstream care settings in a bind, acute care hospitals are having a harder time discharging patients and clearing beds for new arrivals.
The result is not only a capacity issue for facilities facing an influx of COVID-19 cases but unnecessarily longer stays that redouble the demand for costly staff and supplies.
“We’re finding almost across-the-board difficulties in discharging patients on a timely basis because the facilities to which we’re referring are experiencing all the same issues that we have,” Universal Health Services (UHS) Chief Financial Officer Steve Filton said at this week’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. “So, in whatever the community is, the nursing home has 20% of their beds home, the rehab center has two floors closed or whatever because they can’t find enough folks.”
