Quality of care for depressed elderly pre-post prospective payment system: differences in response across treatment...

We evaluated the quality of care for depressed elderly patients (n = 2,746) hospitalized in general medical hospitals (n = 297) before or after implementation of Medicare's Prospective Payment System, focusing on whether the response to time period differed for hospitals that in the post-PPS period had no psychiatric unit, an exempt psychiatric unit, or a nonexempt unit, and by ward placement within hospitals with psychiatric units. Quality of care increased over time, and for most measures of quality of care the level of improvement did not differ significantly across different types of hospitals or by ward placement. The intensity of use of therapeutic services, such as rehabilitation, occupation, or recreation therapy, increased over time, particularly in nonexempt psychiatric units and hospitals without psychiatric units, such that these locations caught up some over time in the level of use of these services to the level for exempt psychiatric units. Several outcomes of care improved over time, and the degree of improvement in the rate of inpatient medical and psychiatric complications and other outcomes was significantly greater for psychiatric units that were exempt post-PPS than for nonexempt treatment locations.