The LTACH Leadership Institute
The Fellows Program
The Institute exists to be a reservoir of knowledge for leading the care of the chronically critically ill. Our Fellows are the people who fill it.
A permanent home for hard-won knowledge.
This care is a discipline of its own, demanding a regulatory, clinical, and financial command unlike any other in American healthcare. It is exercised most intensively in the Long-Term Acute Care Hospital and wherever else these patients receive care. Much of that command has lived in the experience of the leaders who practice it, passed between colleagues by example and at risk of leaving the field with each retirement.
The Fellows Program gives that expertise permanence. The Institute confers each Fellowship in recognition of what the Fellow already knows, and invites Fellows to shape how the discipline records that knowledge, teaches it, and carries it forward.
A Fellow's work outlives the appointment. That is the point.
Three portfolios. One body of knowledge.
The Institute appoints Fellows across three portfolios. Each addresses a different dimension of what the discipline needs and draws on a different kind of expertise. A Fellow's portfolio may change at renewal, or during a term by written agreement with the Fellow.
The three portfolios are equal in standing. Appointment is made to the portfolio that fits the Fellow's contribution.
Senior Fellows
Executive-level leaders shaping the practice standards and body of knowledge of this discipline.
Senior Fellows are seasoned executives whose careers in this care, most often in the LTACH, give them a view of the whole enterprise: operations, compliance, workforce, finance, and the regulatory environment all at once. They help articulate what competent leadership of this care looks like and carry that understanding into the Institute's body of knowledge.
Typical Background
Chief executives, chief operating officers, chief nursing officers, chief financial officers, market and multi-site leaders, and senior corporate executives with substantial responsibility for the care of chronically critically ill patients.
Clinical Fellows
Leaders advancing clinical practice, quality, and innovation for the chronically critically ill.
Clinical Fellows work at the point where leadership decisions meet patient outcomes. They bring depth in the clinical realities that define this care: prolonged mechanical ventilation and weaning, complex wound care, infection prevention in a high-acuity population, care transitions, and the quality and survey readiness infrastructure that holds it all together.
Typical Background
Physicians, nurse leaders, respiratory and rehabilitation leaders, quality and infection prevention leaders, and clinical informatics leaders practicing in or serving long-term acute care and other settings for the chronically critically ill.
Research Fellows
Scholars building the research and evidence base behind this discipline.
Research Fellows build the evidence this discipline's leaders need. The clinical science of the chronically critically ill is deep, while the health services and leadership literature on the settings that care for them remains thin, so operators often make consequential decisions on evidence drawn from other settings. Research Fellows produce, review, and translate work that speaks to this care on its own terms.
Typical Background
Faculty and doctoral-prepared researchers in health services research, nursing science, health administration, health policy, and health economics, along with practitioner-scholars conducting applied research inside operating LTACHs and other settings that care for these patients.
The work of a Fellow
Fellowship is an invitation to contribute. The form a Fellow's contribution takes is agreed at appointment, shaped by their portfolio and the time they choose to give.
Recognition, standing, and a platform
Fellowship is an honorary appointment. It confers standing, not a position.
Fellows serve in an honorary capacity. Any compensated engagement is separate from the fellowship appointment, is governed by an individual written agreement, and is never tied to certification outcomes.
Appointment and term
A note on independence
The Institute maintains a strict separation between its knowledge work and its credentialing function. Fellows contribute to the field's body of knowledge. Certification decisions, examination content, and scoring rest exclusively with the independent Credentialing Board under its own governing documents, and every fellowship appointment stands entirely apart from the certification results of any candidate. A Fellow may author, sell, or teach candidate-preparation content independently, provided the Fellow has no involvement with examination items, and preparation material the Institute does not publish carries neither the Fellow title nor the Institute's marks. A Fellow who serves as an examination Subject Matter Expert is bound by the Subject Matter Expert Agreement and forgoes candidate-preparation activity for the duration of that service.
Looking for a different way to contribute?
Fellowship is one of several ways experienced professionals in this field work with the Institute. If your interest is specifically in building the certification itself, through job task analysis, item writing, item review, and standard setting, that work is done by our Subject Matter Expert panel and follows a separate application process.
Become a Subject Matter ExpertPut your experience where it will last.
If you have built your career in the care of the chronically critically ill, the field needs what you know written down. Tell us about your work, or nominate a colleague whose expertise belongs on the record.