Risk adjusting outcome measures for post-acute care

Brant E Fries1, John N Morris, Pablo Aliaga

  • 1Institute of Gerontology and School of Public Health, University of Michigan, and Ann Arbor VA Medical Center, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2007, USA. bfries@umich.edu

This article examines whether different risk adjusters are needed for home care outcome measures for post-acute care clients. Multiple risk adjusters that met clinical and policy criteria were tested using multiple logistic regression on a sample of 4403 post-acute home care clients from Michigan. Two of the 6 outcome measures had substantially different risk adjusters for the post-acute care population versus the general population. Care should be taken to select outcome measures and risk adjusters for special home care populations.