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Baptist Health Rehab Facilities Named Top Performers in Nation
Date Posted: 5/10/2010
Baptist Health Rehabilitation Center - North Little Rock has
been named as being in the top 10 percent of performers in the nation for a
third year in a row by Uniform Data System for Medical Rehabilitation of
Amherst, N.Y.
Baptist Health Rehabilitation Institute in Little Rock also made it on the list of top performers this year, and in fact made it into the top 2 percent out of 862 rehab facilities throughout the country.
Uniform Data System developed the functional assessment tool that is now required by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for use with rehab inpatients. The rankings of facilities are determined by five components including:
• Functional Independence Measure at discharge –– The combined numerical score of 18 functions that include eating, grooming, bathing, upper-body dressing, lower-body dressing, toileting, bladder control, bowel control, bed transfers, toilet transfers, tub/shower transfers, ambulation, stair climbing, comprehension, expression, problem solving, memory, and social skills. These functions are rated on a scale of 1 to 7 upon admission and then again at discharge.
• Change in Functional Independence Measure –– The rating of change in the patient’s score in the above categories from admission to discharge.
• Length-of-stay efficiency –– The total Functional Independence Measure change divided by the number of days of the admission.
• Community discharge percentage –– The percentage of patients who were discharged to a home environment as opposed to a nursing home, skilled nursing facility, or another hospital.
• Acute discharge percentage –– The percentage of patients who were discharged to an acute-care facility.
The North Little Rock rehabilitation center has been able to maintain its lofty status for the third year in a row by implementing several action steps to improve orthopedic patient outcomes, including an increased emphasis and use of ceiling lifts to assist with stair climbing, follow through with movement of patient to the dining room, implementing an identification program to gauge a patient’s level of mobility, and motivational markers to enhance movement distance.
BH Rehabilitation Center-NLR also increased monitoring of three hours of therapy to assure that all patients receive this level of treatment to impact treatment outcomes. This also included increased therapy on the weekends. Additionally, it implemented a discharge preparation group to address any issues that a patient or family member needs addressing prior to discharge and purchased a Nintendo Wii, which is now utilized in therapy to increase physical strength, balance, and problem solving skills.
BHRI also implemented a number of initiatives in the past year to keep them as one of the national standard bearers for rehabilitation services. For instance, occupational therapists have increased the number of activities-of-daily-living sessions that most patients experience by conducting them at 7 and 8 a.m. Recreation therapists now assisting in the gym have added a professional level of care and the ability to do some things that a therapy aide may not be able to do.
Additionally, because of an improvement in communication between nurses and therapists, nurses are now more aware of a patient’s capabilities and improvements and can reinforce these when the patients are on the unit. There has also been a lot of emphasis on the multi-disciplinary activity groups, especially with the brain-injury and spinal-cord injury patients, and therapists have continued to work on quality-assurance activities related to orthopedic stair climbing and spinal-cord injury mobility.
The utilization of David’s Village, a unique environment that teaches skills to patients in settings such as a grocery store, restaurant, and gas station, as well as a greater emphasis in caregiver training, also aided BHRI’s ranking by the Uniform Data System for Medical Rehabilitation.
Congratulations to all employees working in these areas on the North Little Rock and Little Rock campuses for making Baptist Health a national leader in inpatient rehabilitation!
