How to categorize this observation setting?

[ammonihah99]

How is a "long term acute care" hospital setting categorized in PTCAS? Is that Acute Care Hospital or Rehabilitation/Sub Acute Rehabilitation? Based on the name long term acute care, I would think it would be Acute Care Hospital, but PTCAS says Acute Care Hospitals are short term. So how does that get categorized? For example, this is from a website of such a hospital:

http://www.promisehealthcare.com/?page_id=99

They say the average stay is 25 days, which I would not count as short term. Any ideas?

EDIT: After doing some more research, it looks like LTAC hospitals would probably be categorized as Acute Care Hospitals per PTCAS because they are usually licensed as General Acute Hospitals, and it looks like Medicare bills them both as the same. But I still haven't found anything concrete, and the designation of "short term" is really confusing and seems contradictory.

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[HouseDPT]

It's been a while since I've applied but is there an extended care facility (ECF) option? Sounds like what you're looking for.

If not, I'd go with acute care hospital over rehabilitation, which implies an ability for the patient to receive three hours of multidisciplinary treatment per day.

 

[ammonihah99]

There is an Extended Care Facility option but it is grouped as "Extended Care Facility/Nursing Home/Skilled Nursing Facility". I don't think these LTAC hospitals are nursing homes or SNFs. From what I've read, they are just like regular acute care hospitals, but patients are admitted for 25+ days. The treatment care is high acuity, with complicated diagnoses and several comorbid conditions. Intensive therapy is not possible, so I think your'e right—it can't be a rehab or transitional hospital.

This is a Medicare publication about them:

http://www.medicare.gov/Pubs/pdf/11347.pdf

This is a video describing LTACs:

http://youtu.be/2DmHmCk7Cmk

I'm going to go ahead and categorize it as Acute Care, but I'll contact PTCAS to make sure.