Ickpyo Hong, PhD, OTR1; James S. Goodwin, MD2; Timothy A. Reistetter, PhD, OTR3; et alYong-Fang Kuo, PhD4; Trudy Mallinson, PhD, OTR5; Amol Karmarkar, PhD6; Yu-Li Lin, MS7; Kenneth J. Ottenbacher, PhD, OTR8Author AffiliationsArticle InformationJAMA Netw Open. 2019;2(12):e1916646. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.16646
Read full article here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2756256
Introduction
More than 40% of Medicare beneficiaries are discharged from acute care hospitals to postacute care each year. Reports by the National Academy of Sciences1 and the Institute of Medicine2 have found that postacute care was the largest contributor to geographic variation in Medicare costs. The 2014 Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation (IMPACT) Act3 requires the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a unified payment system for postacute care. As a step in this process, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission recommended that inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRFs) and skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) explore similar episode-based reimbursement for a given condition. The proposal is based, in part, on the substantial overlap in patient populations served by IRFs and SNFs.4,5
The purpose of our study was to examine changes in functional status in a national sample of Medicare beneficiaries with stroke who received inpatient rehabilitation at an IRF or SNF following acute hospital discharge. We selected stroke because it is a major cause of disability in the United States and an important public health issue, patients with stroke have complex neurological disorders that require a range of treatments and expertise, and stroke represents the largest impairment group treated in IRFs.6
In this study, we compared functional outcomes of patients with stroke who were discharged from a hospital to an IRF or SNF. There are challenges in comparing outcomes in observational studies, the most important of which is bias by indication, or selection bias. Inpatient rehabilitation facilities have more stringent criteria for admission than do SNFs, including the requirement that patients be able to complete 3 hours of rehabilitation therapy daily. Several studies7–9 have shown that traditional methods of controlling for patient characteristics, such as logistic regression and propensity analyses, tend not to be effective in the face of strong selection biases. There are several approaches to mitigating this problem. One approach is to assess how large a bias would have to be to eliminate the association observed, which allows the reader to judge whether the existence of such a bias is plausible, such as by use of the E-value.10 Another approach is to indirectly assess the strength of the bias and whether it is eliminated by a specific analytic approach, such as by using a control outcome, a measure that should not be affected by differences between the 2 treatments but would be affected by selection biases. In this study, we used all-cause mortality between 30 and 365 days after hospital discharge as a control outcome. The control outcome should be strongly related to the underlying health of the patients but only minimally influenced by residence in an IRF vs SNF. If the statistical analyses show significant IRF vs SNF differences in 30- to 365-day mortality, that result would suggest that underlying selection biases remain. A third approach is to use analytic approaches shown to minimize selection biases, such as instrumental variable analysis.7–9 We used these 3 approaches to compare outcomes of patients with stroke who were discharged from acute care to IRFs vs SNFs.
We hypothesized that patients discharged to IRFs would have larger improvements in mobility and self-care function than those discharged to SNFs.
Key Points
Question Is change in physical function associated with receiving postacute care after a stroke in inpatient rehabilitation vs skilled nursing facilities?
Findings This cohort study included 99,185 patients who received postacute care in inpatient rehabilitation or skilled nursing facilities after a stroke. Care in an inpatient rehabilitation facility was associated with greater improvement in mobility and self-care compared with care in a skilled nursing facility, and a significant difference in functional improvement remained after accounting for patient, clinical, and facility characteristics at admission.
Meaning These findings suggest that there is room for payment reform in postacute care and highlight the need to target decision-making regarding discharge to postacute facilities based on patient needs and potential for recovery.
Abstract
Importance Health care reform legislation and Medicare plans for unified payment for postacute care highlight the need for research examining service delivery and outcomes.
Objective To compare functional outcomes in patients with stroke after postacute care in inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRF) vs skilled nursing facilities (SNF).
Design, Setting, and Participants This cohort study included patients with stroke who were discharged from acute care hospitals to IRF or SNF from January 1, 2013, to November 30, 2014. Medicare claims were used to link to IRF and SNF assessments. Data analyses were conducted from January 17, 2017, through April 25, 2019.
Exposures Inpatient rehabilitation received in IRFs vs SNFs.
Main Outcomes and Measures Changes in mobility and self-care measures during an IRF or SNF stay were compared using multivariate analyses, inverse probability weighting with propensity score, and instrumental variable analyses. Mortality between 30 and 365 days after discharge was included as a control outcome as an indicator for unmeasured confounders.
Results Among 99, 185 patients who experienced a stroke between January 1, 2013, and November 30, 2014, 66,082 patients (66.6%) were admitted to IRFs and 33,103 patients (33.4%) were admitted to SNFs. A higher proportion of women were admitted to SNFs (21,466 [64.8%] women) than IRFs (36,462 [55.2%] women) (P < .001). Compared with patients admitted to IRFs, patients admitted to SNFs were older (mean [SD] age, 79.4 [7.6] years vs 83.3 [7.8] years; P < .001) and had longer hospital length of stay (mean [SD], 4.6 [3.0] days vs 5.9 [4.2] days; P < .001) than those admitted to IRFs. In unadjusted analyses, patients with stroke admitted to IRF compared with those admitted to SNF had higher mean scores for mobility on admission (44.2 [95% CI, 44.1-44.3] points vs 40.8 [95% CI, 40.7-40.9] points) and at discharge (55.8 [95% CI, 55.7-55.9] points vs 44.4 [95% CI, 44.3-44.5] points), and for self-care on admission (45.0 [95% CI, 44.9-45.1] points vs 41.8 [95% CI, 41.7-41.9] points) and at discharge (58.6 [95% CI, 58.5-58.7] points vs 45.1 [95% CI, 45.0-45.2] points). Additionally, patients in IRF compared with those in SNF had larger improvements for mobility score (11.6 [95% CI, 11.5-11.7] points vs 3.5 [95% CI, 3.4-3.6] points) and for self-care score (13.6 [95% CI, 13.5-13.7] points vs 3.2 [95% CI, 3.1-3.3] points). Multivariable, propensity score, and instrumental variable analyses showed a similar magnitude of better improvements in patients admitted to IRF vs those admitted to SNF. The differences between SNF and IRF in odds of 30- to 365-day mortality (unadjusted odds ratio, 0.48 [95% CI, 0.46-0.49]) were reduced but not eliminated in multivariable analysis (adjusted odds ratio, 0.72 [95% CI, 0.69-0.74]) and propensity score analysis (adjusted odds ratio, 0.75 [95% CI, 0.72-0.77]). These differences were no longer statistically significant in the instrumental variable analyses.
Conclusions and Relevance In this cohort study of a large national sample, inpatient rehabilitation in IRFs for patients with stroke was associated with substantially improved physical mobility and self-care function compared with rehabilitation in SNFs. This finding raises questions about the value of any policy that would reimburse IRFs or SNFs at the same standard rate for stroke.
