The Contribution of Skilled Nursing Facilities to Hospitals’ Readmission Rate
Published online on May 18, 2016
Abstract
Objective
To examine the relative influence of hospital and skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) on 30‐day rehospitalization.
Data Sources/Settings
Elderly Medicare beneficiaries newly admitted to a SNF following hospitalization.
Study Design
We ranked hospitals and SNFs into quartiles based on previous years’ adjusted rehospitalization rates (ARRs) and examined how rehospitalizations from a given hospital vary depending upon the admitting SNF ARR quartile. We examined whether the availability of SNFs with low rehospitalization rates influenced hospitals’ SNF readmission rates and whether changes in a hospital's ARR over 3 years is associated with changes in the SNFs to which they discharge.
Principal Findings
Hospital readmission rates from SNFs varied 5 percentage points between patients discharged to SNFs in the lowest and the highest rehospitalization quartiles. Low rehospitalization rate hospitals sent a larger fraction of their patients to the lowest rehospitalization SNFs available in the area. A 10 percent increase in hospital's share of discharges to the lowest rehospitalization quartile SNFs is associated with a 1 percentage point reduction in hospital's ARR.
Conclusions
The SNF rehospitalization rate has greater influence on patients’ risk of rehospitalization than the discharging hospital. Identifying high‐performing SNFs may be a powerful strategy for hospitals to reduce rehospitalizations.