Post-acute care (PAC) settings play a pivotal role in the patient care continuum. They provide a level of care to patients that most hospitals just don’t have the capacity to meet. And, we think, they’re an often forgotten and neglected clinical space in terms of innovation and quality improvement. As a result, 1Unit has extended our expertise in high-quality patient-centered care to PAC settings. To meet the growing demand from PAC facilities which are facing the significant challenge of an aging population, we’ve set up a specialized 1Unit PAC service to facilitate this new opportunity for improving patient care.

We believe that patients in post-acute care and long-term acute settings deserve the same high-quality treatment as in acute settings. Unfortunately, innovations in quality improvement, teamwork, and patient-centered care, are often not transferable from acute settings. Let alone designed specifically for PAC settings. To that end, we’ve customized our Accountable Care Unit care model (ACU®) and Structured Interdisciplinary Bedside Rounds (SIBR®) to meet the needs of post-acute care settings.

Emerging Opportunities

Once again, we’re seeing significant opportunities for patients. We’ve taken the time to optimize and field test our structured care processes for use in PAC settings, e.g., post-acute care SIBR rounds (PAC SIBR). As a result, we see successes similar to those in acute care settings.

• Patients and families are more engaged and participatory
• Nurses are more informed and engaged
• Nurses are happier
• Nurse Practitioners and/or physicians are more effective
• Managers have a greater sense of control and progress

Acute hospitals frequently struggle with ‘patient flow’ issues and admitting capacity. However, in PAC settings which have close ties to acute facilities, we’re seeing synergies emerge around patient flow. Consequently, there is a sense of decompressing the acute space. High-functioning PAC facilities play a vital role in the care continuum as a critical step in the flow of patients out of the hospital and back to their homes and communities. If you efficiently create a destination for lower acuity patients beyond the hospital, acute in-hospital beds can open quicker. In addition, you can admit patients from the emergency department more effectively once you’ve ‘turned over’ the in-hospital beds.

1Unit PAC Services

1Unit PAC can provide the personnel, skills, training and mentoring required to transform your PAC units into high-functioning patient-centered care zones with:

• Post-Acute Care Accountable Care Units (PAC ACU)
• Post-Acute Care Structured Interdisciplinary Bedside Rounds (PAC SIBR)