Standards for Assessing Medical Appropriateness Criteria for Admitting Patients to Rehabilitation Hospitals or Units
AAPM&R's Medical Inpatient Rehabilitation Criteria Task Force Report
Attached for your use is the final AAPM&R Medical Inpatient Rehabilitation Criteria Task Force Report, “Standards for Assessing Medical Appropriateness Criteria for Admitting Patients to Rehabilitation Hospitals or Units”.
This report should be useful to members who work in rehabilitation hospitals and units. Members should look at their own admission criteria and policies, and ascertain whether they are consistent with the standards se forth in the report. If needed, members should be proactive in pursuing revisions to their criteria to be compliant with the report's standards. If members are challenged by third parties about their admission practices (such as if being audited by a Fiscal Intermediary), they may wish to refer to these standards as a way of educating the reviewers and formulating well-documented appeals.
The MIRC Task Force worked to develop balanced standards that reflected the consensus of a diverse group of expert physicians on the factors that should influence the admission of patients to inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRFs). Its recommendations were to reflect professional judgments regarding what would best serve patients. Therefore, its focus was on when individual patients should be admitted to IRFs. During the review process of the report, the task force carefully considered all draft report comments submitted by members and would like to thank those of you who provided input. Your contributions were a valuable component of this process.
The MIRC Task Force was chaired by John Melvin, MD, MMSc. Bruce Gans, MD, served as the board liaison. Academy members of the task force were Leighton Chan, MD, MPH; Dexanne Clohan, MD; Martin Grabois, MD; Kurt Hoppe, MD; Kristjan T. Ragnarsson, MD; Leon Reinstein, MD; Elliot Roth, MD, and M. Elizabeth Sandel, MD.
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