Case Study: WellSpan Health 2019 HAP Achievement Award

Awarded for:  Linking Community Partnerships, Innovations, and Hospital Operations to Solve Community Challenges

Living the Vision

The goal:  Help hospital patients who are medically ready for discharge find affordable nursing or personal care home accommodations or other housing options and avoid unnecessarily long hospital stays.

WellSpan worked with community partners—including local government, social service agencies, and volunteer groups—to meet the challenge of reintegrating long-length-of-stay patients into the community. This collaboration resulted in three approaches:

• A nursing home bed-lease program in a county-owned nursing home to assist patients transitioning to nursing home care
• A recuperative care bed-lease program that integrates primary care, home health, and pharmacy care in a personal care home setting for up to 45 days for patients requiring this kind of support
• A collaborative effort, organized and led by a community leadership advisory council sponsored by the hospital, to prevent the further loss of low-income personal care homes

Results:  The bed-lease programs have successfully reduced the amount of time long-length-of-stay patients spend in the hospital once they are medically ready to transition to other settings. During a two-year period, these programs avoided 3,776 days in long length of stays, increasing hospital capacity by two beds/day and saving nearly $2 million.

 

Download

Topics: Population Health, Quality Initiatives

Revision Date: 9/1/2019

Return to Previous Page