News

 Southwest Healthcare Palmdale Regional Medical Center’s inpatient  rehabilitation unit, The Rehabilitation Institute, is pleased to announce that it ranked in the top 10% of 861 inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRFs) that qualified to be ranked in the IRF database of Netsmart Technologies,  Inc. (Netsmart) for cases discharged between October 2022 and September 2023. 

“We are so proud of the team members at The Rehabilitation Institute and the cohesive care and compassion that  they bring to our inpatient rehabilitation patients,” said Nana Deeb, Chief Executive Officer. “We just recently  received our CARF accreditation for this unit and now this recognition from Netsmart, the nation’s largest  database for rehabilitation outcomes, that tells us that we are indeed doing something right. In fact, we’re doing a  lot of things right. Kudos to our team members of physicians, nurses, therapists, administrative and support staff for their tireless dedication to our patients.” 

The rankings were determined by using Netsmart’s program evaluation model (PEM), a case-mix-adjusted and  severity-adjusted tool that provides facilities with a composite performance score and percentile ranking drawn  from over 80 percent of all IRFs in the country. Netsmart’s PEM Version 2 Report Card uses the indicators of  efficiency and effectiveness contained in the Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility Patient Assessment Instrument  (IRF-PAI), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ reporting tool for the Inpatient Rehabilitation  Facility Prospective Payment System (IRF PPS) and Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility Quality Reporting Program  (IRF QRP). The goal of the PEM Version 2 Report Card is to recognize high-performing facilities for their  delivery of quality patient care that is effective, efficient, timely, and patient-centered. 

“I couldn’t be prouder of the hard-working team that we have. They bring enthusiasm, compassion, and  dedication to the bedside and the therapy gym every day,” said Thomas Nasser, D.O., FAAPMR and Medical  Director of The Rehabilitation Institute. “To be recognized in this way is not only a significant honor as a group,  but it’s confirmation and validation that we are putting every effort forward to giving the patients in our  community the absolute best care possible. We are excited about this, but we also remain hungry. There are more  good things to come!” 

“Southwest Healthcare Palmdale Regional Medical Center’s Rehabilitation Institute has demonstrated their  commitment to providing efficient and exceptional patient care, and we are delighted to present them with this  esteemed award,” said Stephanie Stockton, senior data analyst in the Analytical Services Group at Netsmart. “As  the creator and steward of the nation’s largest database for rehabilitation outcomes, UDSMR actively collaborates with industry leaders to establish and promote best practices. The PEM Report Card was created to identify and  recognize top-performing facilities, and it plays a pivotal role today in elevating performance standards across the  nation. We look forward to working with Southwest Healthcare Palmdale Regional Medical Center’s  Rehabilitation Institute and other facilities across the nation as we collectively strive to advance care standards  throughout the IRF industry.” 

This is the sixteenth year that these awards have been issued to inpatient rehabilitation facilities. The original  PEM Report Card was developed by Uniform Data System for Medical Rehabilitation (UDSMR, LLC) as part of a  proactive solution to the Institute of Medicine’s 2006 recommendation to Congress that every Medicare provider  be reimbursed on a pay-for-performance basis. The PEM Version 2 Report Card built upon the success of the  original version, replacing certain effectiveness indicators with quality measures that were similar in nature and  used in measuring IRF performance in the Medicare IRF QRP. The data used for this report was based on twelve months of data drawn from both Medicare and non-Medicare patients. The results were weighted and combined  into a single composite score, and each facility was assigned a percentile rank from 0 to 100 relative to the other  qualifying IRF subscribers in the UDS-PRO® database.