Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility Ownership Type Yields Mixed Performances on Quality Measures

To evaluate the effects of inpatient rehabilitation facility (IRF) ownership type on IRF-Quality Reporting Program (IRF-QRP) measures.

Cross-sectional, observational design.

We used 2 Centers for Medicare and Medicare publicly-available, facility-level data sources: (1) IRF compare files and (2) IRF rate setting files - final rule. Data from 2021 were included.

The study sample included 1092 IRFs (N=1092).

Not applicable.

We estimated the effects of IRF ownership type, defined as for-profit and nonprofit, on 15 IRF-QRP measures using general linear models. Models were adjusted for the following facility-level characteristics: (1) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid census divisions; (2) number of discharges; (3) teaching status; (4) freestanding vs hospital unit; and (5) estimated average weight per discharge.

Ownership type was significantly associated with 9 out of the fifteen IRF-QRP measures. Nonprofit IRFs performed better with having lower readmissions rates within stay and 30-day post discharge. For-profit IRFs performed better for all the functional measures and with higher rates of returning to home and the community. Lastly, for-profit IRFs spent more per Medicare beneficiary.

Ideally, IRF performance would not vary based on ownership type. However, we found that ownership type is associated with IRF-QRP performance scores. We suggest that future studies investigate how ownership type affects patient-level outcomes and the longitudinal effect of ownership type on IRF-QRP measures.