For Immediate Release
Contact: Derek Berry
Washington, DC – May 22, 2009 – Part of President Obama’s Budget Blueprint for Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 is the ‘bundling’ of payments for both acute hospital care and post-acute care. ‘Bundling’ in this case means that a single entity such as an acute care hospital or provider network would receive ‘bundled’ payments to cover the first 30 or so days of hospital and post-hospital care.
In order to facilitate a thoughtful dialogue on this issue and its effects on all health care providers and consumers, National Rehabilitation Hospital and Georgetown University are collaborating to bring stakeholders together to discuss policy options related to bundling and its alternatives. The conference will convene at Georgetown University’s Leavey Center on Wednesday, June 24, from 8a-5p.
Speakers include conference organizer Gerben DeJong, PhD, Director, Center for Post-Acute Studies, National Rehabilitation Hospital; Jon Glaudemans, Senior VP, Avelere Health; Al Dobson, PhD, Dobson-DaVanzo Health Care Consulting; Barbara Gage, PhD, Research Triangle Institute; Neleen Eisinger, staff member, Senate Finance Committee; Melinda Beeuwkes-Buntin, PhD, RAND Corporation and others.
Conference organizers agree that bundling presents an array of difficult policy choices and, if not structured well, can have unintended consequences that may be difficult to correct later. “There are important choices,” says DeJong. “With respect to how the payment should be structured, the duration of a payment episode, case-mix adjustment, the entity accountable for payment, whether part of the payment should be linked to outcome, and the various metrics by which quality should be measured. Bundling and its many variants are game-changers for American health care.”
Congressional committees are expected to act shortly after this conference in late June, on the final details of the bundling issue, which is gaining steam in the House and Senate at the Obama Administration’s urging.
For more information on this conference, contact Katherine Rucky at 202-877-1345 or email Katherine.M.Rucky@medstar.net.
National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) is a private, not-for-profit facility located in Northwest Washington, D.C. NRH’s services are designed specifically for the rehabilitation of individuals with disabling injuries and illnesses such as stroke, brain injury, spinal cord injury and disease, arthritis, amputations, post-polio syndrome, chronic pain, back and neck pain, occupational injuries, cancer and cardiac disease that require medical rehabilitation, and other neurological and orthopedic conditions. NRH admits approximately 2,200 inpatients annually, has appeared on the “Best Hospitals” list in U.S. News & World Report for 14 consecutive years and is currently ranked among the top hospitals in medical rehabilitation in America. NRH has the only CARF accredited specialty program for both Spinal Cord Injury and Stroke in the region. In addition, NRH’s Spinal Cord Injury Program has been designated one of only 14 Model SCI Systems of care in the country by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), a part of the Department of Education. NRH is a proud member of MedStar Health