Acute Care Management

With an increasing average age of Americans (i.e. the Baby Boomer Generation), hospital management has shifted from acute care management to chronic care management. There are two types of treatment procedures: One is In-patient (those patients who need to be hospitalized) and the other is out-patient (those who do not require to stay overnight in the hospital). Acute care diseases such as pneumonia, upper respiratory tract infection, abscess, fracture and several others can be managed as out-patient services in the physician’s office, urgent care center, or the ER. However, if the severity of the disease increases and the need for constant monitoring of patient arises, then the hospital setting comes into the picture. For hospitals, managing acute care patients does not require a lot of resources which leads to more profitable business. Having said that, with the introduction of bundled care in ACA, managing these patients is no longer an easy task for them. In bundled care approach, hospital reimbursement is based on diseases, and not on the services or the length of the patient’s stay. Thus, in order to make substantive profit, hospitals need to discharge patients as early as possible. This has increased the need for discharge planners and social workers. Moreover, due to the …show more content…
The need for hospitalists have significantly aroused over the care of in-patients. Hospitalists provide continuous care to the patients right from their admission till their discharge. They decrease the patient’s length of stay thereby improving the quality of hospital care (Sultz & Young, 2014, p.147). Similarly, the need for Geriatricians, educators, dieticians, therapists, social workers and discharge planners has elevated. Hence, as a future employee in a hospital environment, I believe that the choice of an educator, dietician, discharge planner or a therapist would be an ideal