Table 4.

Clinician suggestions to improve patient selection process

Suggestion	Quote	Clinician (clinical setting, years experience)
Educate hospital clinicians about SNF capabilities	I would love if everybody involved, and I include physicians in that, had a better sense of what this process is like, so what a SNF is like, what happens there, what doesn’t happen there, what the timeframe is for that, if people had a better sense of the actual transition…	Hospitalist (University, 1)
Identify variability in SNF care quality or outcomes	If there were certain centers that did better or had better physical therapy…I think that’d really change my way or my view of which centers or sites that I would like to send my patients to, and then I can counsel the patients a little bit better about those sites…… I think would be the most helpful if there was some way to really assess level of care, level of physician involvement, level of physical therapy at all of these potential centers that these patients go to next.	Hospitalist (VA, 1)
Checklist for standardizing evaluation of patients	Taking all these things into consideration…maybe even like a spreadsheet of oh, did all of these different disciplines see this patient… maybe even a tool that you check off boxes of… all different family members and disciplines have you talked to and the process of looking for facilities, too, cause I think the process of looking for facilities, especially when you’re new can be very confusing. I think I would’ve especially found it handy to have a tool.	Case manager (University, 3)
Scoring system or tool to predict likelihood of patient benefit from SNF stay	I think if there was some sort of you know, marker or score system that could show effectiveness of therapy or likelihood of improvement and ability to have an outcome which is consistent with going home at the end of the short-term subacute stay, it would be really helpful clinically.	Hospitalist (VA, 1)
	Boy, if there’s a tool that we can employ or if I had a better sense of how to make sure that what I’m saying is the best thing for this patient from a functional perspective, that would be fantastic…	Physical therapist (University, 14)
Feedback on patient experience and outcomes from SNF	What I almost would like….just feedback from patients after they’ve gone. You know, like a short survey just so that we know, cause I know what liaisons tell me, but I don’t really ever see patients again unless for some reason, unfortunately, they’re readmitted.	Case manager (University, 3)