Incremental cost of postacute care in nursing homes.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

To determine whether the case mix index (CMI) based on the 53-Resource Utilization Groups (RUGs) captures all the cross-sectional variation in nursing home (NH) costs or whether NHs that have a higher percent of Medicare skilled care days (%SKILLED) have additional costs. DATA AND SAMPLE: Nine hundred and eighty-eight NHs in California in 2005. Data are from Medicaid cost reports, the Minimum Data Set, and the Economic Census.

Research design

We estimate hybrid cost functions, which include in addition to outputs, case mix, ownership, wages, and %SKILLED. Two-stage least-square (2SLS) analysis was used to deal with the potential endogeneity of %SKILLED and CMI.

Results

On average 11 percent of NHs days were due to skilled care. Based on the 2SLS model, %SKI

SUBMITTER: Spector WD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3015022 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature