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Heterogeneity in Medicare Home Health Patients by Admission Source

Betty Fout, Mike Plotzke and Olivia Jung

Article

October 3, 2018

Unlike other post-acute care settings, a large and growing share of Medicare Fee-For-Service patients are admitted to home health without a prior hospitalization or facility-based post-acute stay. Differences in home health patients by admission source have implications for standardizing measurement, and potentially payment, across post-acute care settings. We examined home health patients’ demographic, health, and utilization patterns when stratified by their admission source. We found that community-admitted patients were more likely to be dually eligible, have multiple home health episodes, have Alzheimer disease, and have suffered from depression. Noncommunity admission sources were associated with higher 30-day post home health admission hospitalization rates. These differences should be accounted for in properly incentivizing agencies to care for all types of patients appropriate for home health.

Regions
North America