Can Older Adults Accurately Report Their Use of Physical Rehabilitation Services?

To explore the accuracy of rehabilitation service use reports by older adults as well as variation in accuracy by demographic characteristics, time since use, duration, and setting (inpatient, outpatient, home).

Longitudinal observational study.

Participants' homes.

Community-dwelling adults ages 65 and older (N=4228) in the 2015 National Health and Aging Trends Study who were enrolled in Medicare Parts A and B for 12 months before their interview.

Not applicable.

Respondents were asked whether they received rehabilitation services in the past year and the duration and location of services. Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System codes and Revenue Center codes were used to identify Medicare-eligible rehabilitation service.

Survey-based reports and Medicare claims yielded similar estimates of rehabilitation use over the past year. Self-reported measures had high sensitivity (77%) and positive predictive value (80%) and even higher specificity and negative predictive value (approaching 95%). However, in adjusted models, sensitivity was lower for black enrollees, the very old, and those with lower education levels.

Survey-based measures of rehabilitation accurately captured use over the past year, but differential reporting should be considered when characterizing rehabilitation use in certain subgroups of older Americans.