A controversial study asserts that additional post-acute days spent in a skilled care facility do not necessarily lead to better clinical outcomes.
Brown University researchers based their findings on data culled from 300,000 hip fracture patients. They discovered that patients covered by traditional, fee-for-service Medicare spent about 31 days in a nursing facility after a hospital discharge. That’s almost a week more than the 25 days spent by patients covered by Medicare Advantage, according findings appearing Tuesday in PLOS Medicine.
Despite receiving six fewer days of post-acute care, Medicare Advantage patients actually had slightly better health outcomes following their release from a post-acute facility, investigators claimed.
“Longer lengths of stay cost more but do not yield better health,” said Amit Kumar, Ph.D., the study’s lead author.
Brown University investigators said the findings are particularly notable, given the growing interest in Medicare Advantage. In decades past, as few as 5% of enrollees chose this option. But following passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, this choice expanded to one-in-three Americans using Medicare, or close to 20 million individuals.
Vincent Mor, Ph.D. — a professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown, and a senior author of the study — said he feels confident the study makes apples to apples comparisons. He cautioned skilled care leaders to take the information seriously, as Medicare Advantage is expected to continue growing in the years ahead.
“This is going to be the wave of the future, and it’s already present in many markets,” he told McKnight’s.
