Correlation between home health resource utilization measures

The study explored the strengths of the correlation between three home health resource utilization measures: number of visits, length of stay, and total direct care time. The setting was four home health agencies in the northwest; 2,788 home health episodes of care were studied. The results showed that although number of visits and total direct care time were highly correlated (r = .96), the strength of the correlation between number of visits and length of stay (r = .65) and total direct care time and length of stay (r = .63) were only moderate. Although visit counts and direct care time were redundant measures in the mostly fee-for-service reimbursement environment of the current study, in a prospective payment environment where visit length may show increased variation, researchers will need to confirm redundancy in the two measures.