here's how medicare works. grandma gets admitted to the hospital for an emphysema attack. grandma stays for a few days getting medical therapies. every day grandma is hospitalized she gets weaker and weaker and weaker. it has now been 4 days and grandma is now ready to go back home and smoke, but she's too weak to hold her own cigarette. so where is grandma supposed to go?
I work in a SNF, and it is NOT like long term care.
I ask this to end my own ignorance on the subject...what is the difference between LTC and a SNF? I ask because in the various positions in which I have worked (in the hospital), it seems the two are used interchangeably.
Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.
I ask this to end my own ignorance on the subject...what is the difference between LTC and a SNF? I ask because in the various positions in which I have worked (in the hospital), it seems the two are used interchangeably.
SNFs are LTC facilities with at least one short-term skilled Medicare unit in the building. The residents in the short-term unit are too sick to go home, but the hospital can do nothing more for them and has discharged them, so they are in somewhat of a limbo until they medically improve.
SNFs often get patients who are two or three days post-op after having undergone total knee replacements, total hip replacements, CABGs, hysterectomies, thrombectomies, laminectomies, limb amputations, colectomies, kyphoplasties, and other major surgical procedures. The patient is too debilitated to discharge home after two days post-op, so they recover at the SNF with basic nursing care and therapies (PT, OT, ST, etc.).
SNFs also get patients who are deconditioned after being hospitalized for acute medical issues such as MIs, major CVAs, status post MVA, pneumonia, cancer, acute renal failure, fractures, COPD exacerbation, CHF exacerbation, nonhealing wounds, and so forth. They are too debilitated to go home when the hospital discharges them, so they are discharged to SNF for basic nursing care, rehab (PT, OT, ST) and hopes for a speedy recovery.
The admissions people at the various SNFs where I've previously worked will never refer to the place as a 'nursing home' or 'SNF' or 'LTC facility' when selling the place to families and patients. They will always market the place as a 'rehab center' or 'rehab hospital' or 'care center' because a significant number of patients and families would refuse admission if it was truthfully marketed to them as a nursing home with a short term wing for rehab.
The article is not that far off. SNF nurse here, Currently I have 2 patients both with G-tubes, unresponsive to verbal stimuli, opens eyes occasionally. They are on the SNF hall with orders for PT and ST to evaulate and treat.
I did not find the article insulting to nurses. Dealing with Medicare regs would make Mother Theresa a cynic. I get Home health admissions weekly that have no business being out of ICU, family all works or are all dead already and the 99 yo with IV antibiotics and a new hip thinks the current president is Woodrow Wilson.
SNF nurses write the best referrals!!! Hotshot hospitals can't compare.
psu_213, BSN, RN
3,878 Posts
I ask this to end my own ignorance on the subject...what is the difference between LTC and a SNF? I ask because in the various positions in which I have worked (in the hospital), it seems the two are used interchangeably.