Rennova Health expands services at Big South Fork Medical Center

Rennova Health announced its critical access hospital in Oneida, Tennessee has received notice from Medicare that it can now be reimbursed using a “swing bed” payment model. According to the 2020 CMS interpretive guidelines for swing beds in Critical Access Hospitals, “a ‘swing-bed’ is a change in reimbursement status.” As a payment model, then, a CAH can use its beds interchangeably for either acute care or post-acute care. The reimbursement “swings” from billing for acute care services to billing for post-acute skilled nursing services, despite the fact that the patient usually stays in the same bed in the same physical location. A local swing bed program also directly impacts local rural residents. As a patient-centric post-acute care solution, rural patients who find themselves too well to stay in an urban hospital but too sick to go back to their own homes can return to their rural community hospitals for further care.