George Hager

Two of the country’s largest post-acute care providers are joining forces in an effort to improve quality and care transitions.

The partnership between Kindred Healthcare and Genesis HealthCare, announced in late January, was spurred by the changing healthcare landscape, according to Genesis CEO George Hager Jr.

“Under the new world of value-based purchasing, providers across the continuum need to collaborate to identify ways to provide the best care possible,” Hager said. “Our relationship marks the first time the two largest providers of post-acute care are working together to pave the future for patients, payers and the healthcare system.”

Kindred and Genesis will leverage their respective rehabilitation and skilled nursing strengths to “align patient care across the continuum,” but their relationships with other providers will not be limited by the partnership, the companies said. 

The new initiative will focus on data tracking of discharges, readmissions, lengths of stay and other episodic information in order to create new quality standards and protocols for post-acute care. 

The partnership also will work to promote physician collaboration to boost care across the continuum; support new post-acute care networks; find ways to improve care for specific patient populations; identify methods to better track patients’ episodes of care; and create guidelines and tools for post-acute care discharge planning.

“The collaboration will build upon our abilities to deliver quality, share best practices and improve care transitions in local markets across all post-acute settings in order to meet patients where and when they need care,” said Benjamin Breier, president and CEO of Kindred. He said the company’s future includes coordinated post-acute care driven by technology and data.