In its latest report to Congress, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) contends that patients discharged from hospitals generally don’t select the best home health agency in their area.
In fact, they often pick an agency that’s considerably worse in terms of quality of care, MedPAC’s June 2018 Report to Congress notes.
More than 94% of beneficiaries who used home health or skilled nursing facility services “had at least one provider within a 15-mile radius that was of higher quality than the provider that served them,” the report states. And roughly 70% of beneficiaries who received home health care at least five other home health agencies in their area were of higher quality than the agency they chose.
“The magnitude of the quality difference between the higher performing nearby providers and the provider selected was substantial in many cases,” MedPAC notes.
The report states that in a reformed discharge planning process, a goal should be to help beneficiaries identify better quality post-acute providers. The report contends that authorizing hospital discharge planners to recommend specific higher quality providers would help.