Home Health & Hospice Week

Dual-eligibles fared the worst, data snapshot shows.

Data about COVID-19’s impact on Medicare beneficiaries in home health and hospice hasn’t been released, but agencies might get an idea by looking at the figures for nursing homes.

“Nursing home residents have been particularly affected by COVID-19, as they are predominately elderly, tend to have underlying conditions, and live in close quarters,” the HHS Office of Inspector General says in a new report, “COVID-19 Had a Devastating Impact on Medicare Beneficiaries in Nursing Homes During 2020.”

For example: Two in five Medicare beneficiaries in nursing homes were diagnosed with either COVID-19 or likely COVID-19 in 2020, the OIG points out in the report. And “almost 1,000 more beneficiaries died per day in April 2020 than in April 2019,” it says.

Another startling figure is that “overall mortality in nursing homes increased to 22 percent in 2020 from 17 percent in 2019,” the OIG reveals in its data snapshot. In other words, the overall mortality rate in nursing homes rose 32 percent in 2020.

The OIG also analyzes characteristics of benes that saw the highest COVID impact. “Dually eligible beneficiaries — those enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid — were much more likely than Medicare-only beneficiaries to contract COVID-19,” the report says. “Fifty-six percent of dually eligible beneficiaries in nursing homes had or likely had COVID-19 in 2020, compared to 29 percent of Medicare-only beneficiaries,” according to the OIG.

“Although each group’s mortality rate rose during the pandemic, the increase was greater for dually eligible beneficiaries,” the OIG continues. “Specifically, 26 percent of dually eligible beneficiaries in nursing homes died in 2020, up from 19 percent the previous year. Meanwhile, the mortality rate for their Medicare-only counterparts grew to 19 percent from 16 percent.”

Conclusion: “Previous research has shown that dually eligible beneficiaries are generally poorer and sicker — having low-incomes and multiple chronic conditions to manage — compared to other Medicare beneficiaries,” the OIG says.

See more demographic data at https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/OEI-02-20-00490.pdf.