%0 Journal Article
%T Heterogeneity in Medicare Home Health Patients by Admission Source
%A Betty Fout
%A Michael Plotzke
%A Olivia S Jung
%J Home Health Care Management & Practice
%@ 1552-6739
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/1084822318793882
%X 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
%K home health
%K Medicare
%K post-acute care
%K admission source
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1084822318793882