LTACHs are licensed as acute care or specialty hospitals and they are certified by Medicare as long-term care hospitals. LTACHs must maintain a 25-day average length of stay and be accredited by HFAP or JCAHO. Patients must meet acute care admission and continued stay criteria.
LTACHs provide acute services for patients that are medically complex and require a long hospitalization. LTACHs offer specialized care for a variety of conditions including, but not limited to:
- Ventilator dependent and weaning difficulty
- Pressure wounds/ Wound Care complications
- Cardiac diseases
- Neuromuscular/ neurovascular diseases
- Multi-system organ failure
- Gastrointestinal diseases
- Post-op complications
- Pulmonary disease
- Acute renal failure including dialysis
- Infectious Diseases requiring long term IV therapy.
Often LTACHs are mistakenly compared to Skilled or Sub-Acute facilities. See chart below for comparison:
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