Growth of Home Health Services and Disparities in California, 2001-2010

The recent increase in Medicare (average) payment could potentially expand the availability of HH services to a wider population and reduce the existing race/ethnic gaps in access to HH services that have been documented in the past.6 However, it is unclear whether these gaps will actually be reduced in practice because the HH provider market is mostly unregulated. This policy brief examines whether inequities in access to HH services were ameliorated by the expansion of services. Because the change in HH services may be related to a change in SNF services, I compare the availability of the two services in the same neighborhood side by side, which is rarely examined in the literature. The data is drawn from the Office of Statewide Housing and Planning Department from the census of every HH agency (HHA) and SNF in California between 2001 and 2010. The provider data was mapped to demographic and economic information from the U.S. Census Bureau by the zip codes and counties where HHAs/ SNFs are located.