Home Health & Hospice Week

More studies are training the spotlight on health equity in home health and hospice.

Study No. 1: “In both Medicaid only and dual-eligible populations, Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black individuals had the lowest odds of receiving hospice, and Hispanic individuals had the highest odds of a short hospice stay,” report authors of the study Racial and Ethnic Differences in Hospice Use Among Medicaid-Only and Dual-Eligible Decedents, published in the latest issue of JAMA Health Forum.

The “findings raise concerns about equity and timing of access to hospice for Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black individuals in these understudied Medicaid populations. Knowledge about, access to, and acceptance of hospice may be lacking for these low-income individuals,” says the study at https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2812607.

Study No. 2: Despite having similar conditions, Black patients were less likely than those in other ethnicity groups to be discharged from a hospital with a home health referral, says a study published in the journal Medical Care, Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Home Health Referral Among Adult Medicare Patients.

“Home health care (HHC) services following hospital discharge provide essential continuity of care to mitigate risks of posthospitalization adverse outcomes and readmissions, yet patients from racial and ethnic minority groups are less likely to receive HHC visits,” says the study’s abstract at https://journals.lww.com/lww-medicalcare/abstract/2024/01000/ racial_and_ethnic_disparities_in_home_health.4.aspx.

Study No. 3: Functional outcomes for home health patients vary by race and income level, finds a study published in the journal Health Services Research, Getting to the root: Examining within and between home health agency inequities in functional improvement.

Patients belonging to minority groups or with low incomes “were all more likely to be discharged without functional improvement … compared to White and higher income patients,” notes the study abstract at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37356822.