Starting in August, The New Jewish Home will fully outsource the physician team at its Manhattan skilled nursing facility to the Mount Sinai Health System, further solidifying a partnership between the SNF operator and one of New York’s major hospital systems.
The arrangement has been in the works since last year, when the SNF operator first approached Mount Sinai about expanding their partnership, New Jewish Home Senior Vice President of Business Development Regina Melly told Skilled Nursing News.
The non-profit operator has facilities in Manhattan, suburban Westchester County, and the Bronx, providing in-home care and elder housing in addition to skilled nursing care. New Jewish Home’s Manhattan SNF has a total of 514 beds, with 163 dedicated to post-acute patients.
New Jewish Home and Mount Sinai have already collaborated on an advanced orthopedic rehabilitation center for stroke patients and those with knee and hip replacements. Under that partnership, Mount Sinai physicians work at the center with positive results: Both length of stay and readmission rates have declined, Melly said, prompting New Jewish to explore the idea of permanently staffing its Manhattan facility with Mount Sinai doctors.
“They’d basically become SNFists who are working on both our short-term post-acute, and long-term sides,” Melly said.
The two sides inked the formal deal in January, with a planned rollout by August. Under the terms of the agreement, New Jewish Home will pay Mount Sinai a negotiated rate for the entire outsourcing arrangement, with the SNF operator keeping the Medicare, Medicaid, or managed care reimbursements.
“A Strategic Decision”
By streamlining the transition from the hospital to a post-acute or long-term setting, New Jewish Home hopes to cut readmission rates and boost patient morale during what can often be a stressful time. For instance, when a patient from a Mount Sinai hospital enters the SNF, New Jewish Home doctors will have access to his or her electronic medical records, facilitating a cleaner transition of information, Melly said.
In 2016, the Manhattan facility logged an overall rehospitalization rate of 12.56%, Melly said. While the operator is still in the process of developing its exact target, Melly told SNN that they hope to reduce readmissions by more than 10% under the partnership.
New Jewish Home also plans to have its physician partners rotate through the three Mount Sinai hospitals that most frequently send patients to its Manhattan SNF: Mount Sinai, Mount Sinai West, and St. Luke’s.
“You will have these integrated medical practitioners who will have exposure to best practices in both post-acute and acute care settings,” Melly said.
New Jewish Home is no stranger to hospital partnerships. The operator also collaborates with NYU Langone Medical Center on a cardiac pulmonary rehabilitation program, and participates in a joint replacement CMS bundle with the Hospital for Special Surgery, White Plains Hospital, and New York-Presbyterian’s Lawrence Hospital.
“We really made a strategic decision about five years ago to build our business and build our traditional care perspective through collaborating with other partners,” Melly said.
Written by Alex Spanko
