TY - JOUR AU - Buntin,Melinda Beeuwkes AU - Garten,Anita Datar AU - Paddock,Susan AU - Saliba,Debra AU - Totten,Mark AU - Escarce,Jose J. TI - How Much is Post-Acute Care Use Affected by Its Availability? JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 10424 PY - 2004 Y2 - April 2004 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10424 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10424.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Melinda B. Buntin RAND 1776 Main Street Santa Monica CA 90407 E-Mail: buntin@rand.org Anita Datar Garten Susan M. Paddock RAND Corporation 1776 Main Street Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138 E-Mail: paddock@rand.org Debra Saliba E-Mail: Debra_Saliba@rand.org Mark Totten E-Mail: Mark_Totten@rand.org Jose Escarce UCLA Med-GIM-HSR 911 Broxton Avenue Box 951736 Los Angeles, CA 90024 Tel: 310/794-3842 Fax: 310/794-0732 E-Mail: jescarce@mednet.ucla.edu AB - To assess the relative impact of clinical factors versus non-clinical factors such as post acute care (PAC) supply - in determining whether patients receive care from skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) or inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRFs) after discharge from acute care. Medicare acute hospital, IRF and SNF claims provided data on PAC choices; predictors of site of PAC chosen were generated from Medicare claims, provider of services, enrollment file, and Area Resource File data. We used multinomial logit models to predict post-acute care use by elderly patients after hospitalizations for stroke, hip fractures, or lower extremity joint replacements. A file was constructed linking Medicare acute and post-acute utilization data for all sample patients hospitalized in 1999. PAC availability is a more powerful predictor of PAC use than the clinical characteristics in many of our models. The effects of distance to providers and supply of providers are particularly clear in the choice between IRF and SNF care. The farther away the nearest IRF is, and the closer the nearest SNF is, the less likely a patient is to go to an IRF. Similarly, the fewer IRFs, and the more SNFs, there are in the patient's area the less likely the patient is to go to an IRF. In addition, if the hospital from which the patient is discharged has a related IRF or a related SNF the patient is more likely to go there. We find that the availability of PAC is a major determinant of whether patients use such care and which type of PAC facility they use. Further research is needed in order to evaluate whether these findings indicate that a greater supply of PAC leads to both higher use of institutional care and better outcomes or whether it leads to unwarranted expenditures of resources and delays in returning patients to their homes. ER -