Home Health & Hospice Week

As law- and policy-makers continue to work on the idea of a unified payment system for all post-acute care settings, data revealed in a new study emphasizes the importance of therapy.

For example: “Greater therapy intensity among patients admitted to the [home health agency] could further improve functional status, as the benefit does not diminish as the minutes increase,” found a study by Dobson DaVanzo and Associates, commissioned by the American Physical Therapy Association and the American Occupational Therapy Association.

Home health patients receiving the top 10 percent of therapy by volume saw functional improvements more than twice that of the lowest 10 percent, the Therapy Outcomes in Post-Acute Care Settings, 2021 study found.

Plus: The lowest 10 percent also saw a much higher risk of readmission 30 days after discharge, 8.5 percent compared to 5.8 percent for the “Typical Intensity” group and 5.6 percent for the lowest 10 percent group.

The TOPS study “shows that occupational therapy and physical therapy have direct and positive impacts on patients in post-acute care settings, including improving the functional ability of patients and reducing readmissions to acute care hospitals,” AOTA president Wendy Hildenbrand says in a release about the study.

See more data at www.aota.org/TOPS.