Hospital patients sent to skilled nursing facilities rather than homecare settings are less likely to be readmitted, a new study finds.
However, mortality rates were similar for both groups, and overall Medicare costs were lower for homecare patients, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago.
“Understanding these tradeoffs is particularly important as new alternative payment models push patients toward lower-cost settings for care,” the researchers reported.
The team gathered its findings by combing through Medicare claims data for more than 17 million patients treated between 2010 and 2016. The results are important for hospitals, which, like skilled nursing facilities, can lose up to 2% of their Medicare reimbursement for posting higher-than-average readmission rates.
Full findings appear in a JAMA Internal Medicine study published this week.
Authors estimated that home health saved Medicare about $4,500 on average in the 60 days after hospital admission, with those services costing slightly less than SNFs. This is the first such study to compare outcomes on a large scale between the two settings.
