Is a Skilled Nursing Facility's Rehospitalization Rate a Valid Quality Measure?

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To determine whether the observed differences in the risk-adjusted rehospitalization rates across skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) reflect true differences or merely differences in patient severity.

Settings

Elderly Medicare beneficiaries newly admitted to an SNF following hospitalization.

Study design

We used 2009-2012 Medicare data to calculate SNFs' risk-adjusted rehospitalization rate. We then estimated the effect of these rehospitalization rates on the rehospitalization of incident patients in 2013, using an instrumental variable (IV) method and controlling for patient's demographic and clinical characteristics and residential zip code fixed effects. We used the number of empty beds in a patient's proximate SNFs during hospital discharge to create the

SUBMITTER: Rahman M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5134219 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature