What’s the difference between Skilled Care and Long-term Care?
At our staff meeting today, our care management team was talking about how many confusing terms there are out there. Many of our clients and their families are confused by the terms, skilled nursing facility, long-term care facility, and rehabilitative facility. So, what do all these terms mean?
Now days, most skilled nursing facilities, (SNF’s) are also rehabilitative facilities and long-term care facilities. When we talk about skilled facilities we refer to medical centers that offer 24-hour care by licensed professionals, like RN’s, LPN’s, occupational, physical and speech therapists. There is at least one physician that also oversees the care of each patient. People may need skilled care for a short period of time after recovering from an illness or surgery, or they may need this level of care long term. Here is a list of examples of skilled care:
Wound care
Medications that must be given by injection vs. by mouth
IV therapy
Physical, occupation and speech therapy
A need for a person to be on a monitor, such as a heart monitor
Most assisted livings will NOT take a client with a wound, requiring IV therapy or needing to be on a monitor. Most assisted livings WILL take clients who need physical, occupational or speech therapies and often have a therapy agency set up to visit the community daily.
Rehabilitative services are offered to patients as they recover from an illness such as a stroke, or a surgery. The patient receives therapy once or twice a day within the skilled nursing facility as they recover and are receiving other skilled care. Once they are deemed strong enough and stable, most patients leave a skilled nursing facility to go home or into assisted living.
Long-term care facilities are often part of a skilled facility. They are for patients that require hands on care and supervision 24 hours a day but may not require skilled care.
Medicare will often pay for skilled services for a set period of time and within certain boundaries. A physician needs to write an order for the services to be covered. Medicare does NOT cover assisted living costs but will cover a certain number of hours of therapy in assisted living if needed. Skilled nursing facilities are licensed and carefully monitored. You can check out a SNF’s rating on Medicare.gov.
