THE STANDARD FOR LTACH LEADERSHIP
Every LTACH CEO posting in the country screens for years and setting. None screens for knowledge.
The CLLP™ is the only instrument that makes the second possible.
The CLLP tests a person. Eight domains, one candidate, one result. Whether an employer's program taught them, whether a mentor did, whether fifteen years on the job did, is irrelevant to what the credential asserts. The credential says this individual demonstrated the knowledge. That is the whole claim, and it is complete without reference to any program anywhere.
The problem we are solving
Hiring for the sickest patients in American healthcare is done by proxy.
Postings screen for what can be audited after the fact. Budget variance, survey results, census. They cannot screen for the judgments that are invisible until they go wrong, and those are the expensive ones.
Skilled nursing credentials were built for nursing homes. Acute care programs were built for general hospitals. Neither was built for the environment an LTACH leader actually works in, where ventilator-dependent patients face high-mortality, advanced multi-system infectious deterioration, where ICU-level care extends for weeks or months, where regulatory exposure is uniquely complex, and where the margin for leadership failure is measured in patient outcomes.
The result is that LTACH administrators and directors have been leading one of healthcare's most demanding environments screened on criteria that were never designed to measure what the work requires.
Long-term care hospitals participating in Medicare in 2024, down from 371 in 2019. Source: MedPAC Data Book, July 2026.
Certifications in the United States built specifically for LTACH leadership until the CLLP™
Competency domains the examination measures, validated through a job analysis and a sector-wide blueprint survey
The Credential
One standard, and it is not tied to a building.
The CLLP™ is a single professional certification. No levels, no grades, no ordering of holders. One examination, one standard, one result.
What it measures follows the patient rather than the payment classification. The chronically critically ill are cared for in acute ICUs, ventilator weaning units, skilled nursing pulmonary programs, rehabilitation hospitals, home health, and hospital-at-home. A leader responsible for that population in any of those settings sits the same examination and earns the same designation on the same terms.
That portability is the point. A credential that only means something inside one building is a job title. This one travels with the person who holds it.
Why the standard was built in the LTACH firstWHAT THE EXAMINATION MEASURES
Eight domains. One standard.
LTACH Clinical Operations
Regulatory & Compliance
Financial & Business Acumen
Leadership & People Management
Patient & Family Experience
Strategic & Operational Leadership
Ethics & Professionalism
Healthcare Technology & Infrastructure
PREPARATION IS OPTIONAL. THE STANDARD IS NOT.
Preparation you choose. A credential you earn.
Executive Track
72 contact hours · $4,500
For leaders accountable for a hospital or a portfolio. Enterprise financial frameworks, payor and market strategy, environment of care and life safety as executive accountabilities, and a mentored Facility Improvement Plan practicum.
Foundations Track
24 contact hours · $1,500
For leaders holding supervisory responsibility on a unit or in a single function. The chronically critically ill patient and the LTACH clinical pathway, the regulatory envelope, cost and case mix, supervision in a high-acuity environment, family communication across a long stay, operating discipline, ethics, and the information layer.
Practitioner Track
40 contact hours · $2,500
For leaders accountable for a defined area of the hospital, clinical or non-clinical. Adds clinical performance management across the chronically critically ill population, audit and documentation defense, area budget and productivity, and leading through others in a scarce labor market.
Track content includes material that is not measured on the examination. Preparation tracks are educational programs. They are not credentials, not prerequisites, and not conditions of certification.
Eligibility and preparation in fullGoverned by practitioners. Not academics.
The CLLP Credentialing Board.
The CLLP™ is governed by an independent Credentialing Board of active LTACH practitioners and individuals with prior LTACH executive experience — CEOs, clinical operations leaders, regulatory experts, and patient advocates who have spent careers in this setting. They set the standards. They validate the exam. They ensure the CLLP remains current, rigorous, and relevant.
The CLLP Credentialing Board is constituted and conducting its governance work. The Institute continues to receive expressions of interest from active LTACH practitioners and from individuals with prior LTACH executive experience now serving in leadership roles across other healthcare settings. Board member appointments are published as the Institute elects to announce them.
Learn about the InstituteThe inaugural CLLP™ cohort opens for application in Fall 2026.
Founding cohort candidates receive priority scheduling, founding recognition, and founding cohort pricing on the examination fee. Application fees are fully refundable.
For health systems and LTACH operators
Your leaders are being screened on criteria that cannot measure the work.
An operator can build any program it wants. What no operator can do is certify its own executives to a standard anyone outside its payroll will accept, because an employer certifying its own people is a performance review with a logo. The body that holds the standard has to own no hospitals, employ no LTACH executives, and depend on no single operator. That independence is not a limitation to be outgrown. It is the qualifying condition, and it is what makes the credential portable, auditable, and worth something to the people who hold it.