What is a specialty or long-term acute care hospital?
When you have an accident, suffer a stroke or need surgery, the first place you go is the hospital. There, the doctors and nurses fix your injuries, perform your surgery and stabilize your condition. Many times, after being stabilized at a hospital, patients are too medically fragile to go home or to a rehabilitation facility. Perhaps they have an underlying chronic disease, like diabetes or heart disease, which delays the healing process. That’s where a long-term acute care hospital (LTACH) comes in. Patients come to an LTACH for several weeks until they are well enough to move on to the next level of their recovery.
