LAUSR

Re-hospitalization of patients receiving post-acute care (PAC) in skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) has emerged as a leading health policy issue. PAC is the greatest source of geographic variation in Medicare spending. Among hospitalized Medicare fee-for-services beneficiaries, over 20% are discharged to SNFs and nearly a quarter of these patients are re-hospitalized. SNFs are segregated along racial lines and previous research has shown that there are marked racial variat ions in the odds of rehospitalization among select surgical patients discharged to these facilities. It is not clear how widespread racial disparities in re-hospitalizations among SNF patients are and whether other factors such as Medicaid participation influence the risk of them. We used a national dataset to examine risk-adjusted SNF re-hospitalization rates stratified by the racial composition and the proportion of Medicaid patients in these facilities.