Home Health & Hospice Week
Another Study Proves Home Care Saves Money
Post-SNF home care visit within a week makes a big difference. A new study shows home care’s usefulness in preventing hospital readmissions, but this time for patients discharged from a skilled nursing facility. A visit by a home health worker, such as a nurse or physical therapist, within a week of an older adult’s discharge from a SNF appears to lower the risk of hospital readmission within 30 days by nearly half, according to a new Indiana University Center for Aging Research and the Regenstrief Institute study. The study published in the latest issue of The Journal of Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine looked at more 1,500 communitydwelling adults 65 and older who were discharged to a SNF prior to returning home. In contrast, “outpatient provider visits were not associated with reduced risk of hospital readmission,” according to the study’s abstract. “Having a home health worker visit immediately after leaving a SNF was the factor that was most significantly associated with reduced rate of hospital readmission within 30 days of returning home,” notes lead researcher and physician Jennifer Carnahan, assistant professor with the IU School of Medicine. “We aren’t saying that seeing your physician after discharge from the SNF isn’t important,” Carnahan, a geriatrician, says in a release about the study. “We are saying that having a home health worker visit as soon as you return home appears to be more significant in reducing hospital readmissions. If I were a family member advocating for my loved one, I would be really focused on making sure that not a lot of time passes after SNF discharge before a home health worker visit.” “We hope these findings will encourage policy-makers to make home health care more widely available,” urges study senior author, Alexia Torke, also a physician and IU Med School assistant professor. “An early home health visit may be a great way to improve the chances that the older adult won’t need to come back to the hospital so soon.” The abstract for the JAMDA study, funded by The John A. Hartford Foundation and the National Institute on Aging, is available at www.jamda.com/article/S1525-8610(17)30274-8/.
Home Health & Hospice Week
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