Understanding Variation in Postacute Care: Developing Rehabilitation Service Areas Through Geographic Mapping.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

The aims of the study were to demonstrate a method for developing rehabilitation service areas and to compare service areas based on postacute care rehabilitation admissions to service areas based on acute care hospital admissions.

Design

We conducted a secondary analysis of 2013-2014 Medicare records for older patients in Texas (N = 469,172). Our analysis included admission records for inpatient rehabilitation facilities, skilled nursing facilities, long-term care hospitals, and home health agencies. We used Ward's algorithm to cluster patient ZIP Code Tabulation Areas based on which facilities patients were admitted to for rehabilitation. For comparison, we set the number of rehabilitation clusters to 22 to allow for comparison to the 22 hospital referral regions

SUBMITTER: Reistetter TA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8262929 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature