Image of male nurse pushing senior woman in a wheelchair in nursing facility

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is recruiting providers to participate in a demonstration to help improve payment models in the post-acute care setting.

Participating providers will include acute-care hospitals and four post-acute care settings: skilled nursing facilities, long-term care hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation facilities and home health agencies. There has been an ongoing discussion among policymakers in recent years to determine the most appropriate and cost-effective setting for post-acute patients.

The goal of the demonstration is to align incentives among the four settings focusing on patients who use multiple settings, the agency said. CMS also will assess discharge patterns and compare outcomes among the various settings through the demonstration.

See more information about the demonstration at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/DemoProjectsEvalRpts/MD/itemdetail.asp?itemID=CMS1201325.