Medicare Home Health: An Update

Effectiveness of Team-Managed Home-Based Primary Care<SUBTITLE>A Randomized Multicenter Trial</SUBTITLE>

“…Use/cost data were analyzed using Wilcoxon rank-sum tests of readmis-sion rates, use rates, lengths of stay, number of visits, and costs. 2 Tests were performed on the proportion of patients who were readmitted. Cost data were analyzed using intent-totreat and as-treated analyses (ie, patients were grouped by randomization assignment in the first analysis and by the treatment they actually received in the second analysis).…”

When It Is More Than a Job

“…Use of home health services has increased dramatically in recent years (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1996) and is expected to continue to rise in popularity. Increases have occurred in both Medicare and Medicaid spending on home health care (Applebaum, Mollica, & Tilly, 1997; R. L. Kane & Kane, 1995), and home health care currently represents the fastest growing part of the Medicare budget (Cohen, 1998), with expenditures increasing an average of 29% annually during the years 1990 to 1996 (Gage, Stevenson, Liu, & Aragon, 1998). Projected national health care expenditures suggest that home health care services will have the highest growth rate of all types of health care services, with an average of 10.4% growth per year from 1994 to 2005 (Burner & Waldo, 1995).…”