Comparing Quality Between Rehabilitation Skilled Nursing Facilities
The Greater Baltimore Medical Center (GBMC) Sub-Acute Unit, staffed by Gilchrist, is a 27-bed unit licensed as a skilled nursing facility. The unit serves patients who need short-term rehabilitation skilled nursing following a hospitalization. Rehabilitation is geared toward assisting patients in meeting their goals of returning to their prior level of function and independence, so they may return to their previous living arrangements.
Choosing a Rehabilitation Facility
Choosing which rehabilitation facility is best for a loved one can be difficult and overwhelming. To assist patients and families with information that can be helpful when choosing a skilled nursing facility, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has developed a Nursing Home Compare website and Five-Star Quality Rating System, which is available to the public. These tools were created to help consumers, their families and caregivers compare nursing homes and identify areas they may want to ask about when looking at nursing home care.
The Five-Star rating system gives each facility a rating between one and five stars. The nursing home star ratings come from state health inspections, staffing and quality of resident care measures. CMS then calculates a star rating for each of these three categories in addition to an overall rating.
The GBMC Sub-Acute Unit has an overall rating of five stars. In addition, the unit has five-star ratings in each category. The interdisciplinary team on the Sub-Acute Unit works diligently every day to ensure that patients and their families meet the goals they have identified for themselves. With oversight from primary physicians, our team consists of members from therapy, nursing, social work and activities.
Setting Goals
We recognize that goals vary greatly from patient to patient. Therefore, shortly after admission, our team meets with the patient and anyone else the patient deems appropriate for their success regarding their discharge plan. The team then creates an individualized plan of care to enable the desired outcomes and meets on a regular basis to obtain input on the patient’s progress from all involved.
This ongoing communication and assessment between the patient and the team members remains a top priority throughout a patient’s stay. We believe that maintaining this ongoing dialogue leads to successful discharges along with optimizing patients’ abilities to perform at the highest functional level possible. That favorable outcome is the ultimate measure of success for the unit.
To learn more about the GBMC Sub-Acute Unit, staffed by Gilchrist, visit gilchristcares.org/emc-rehab.