The Money Follows the Person (MFP) Demonstration supports states’ efforts to (1) help Medicaid beneficiaries living in long-term care institutions transition back to community-based residences and (2) make long-term care services and supports more accessible. The program promotes community living for long-term institutionalized Medicaid beneficiaries, independent of the level of care required t...

Throughout life, patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) require increasing levels of support, rehabilitative services, and eventual skilled nursing facility (SNF) care. There are concerns that access to SNF care for MS patients is limited because of perceived higher costs of their care. This study compares costs of caring for an MS patient versus those of a typical SNF patient. We merged SNF cos...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the accuracy of the Minimum Data Set (MDS) in identifying hospitalization events and payment source among nursing home residents. RESEARCH DESIGN The 2003 MDS, Medicare Provider Analysis and Review File (MedPAR), Medicare denominator file, Medicaid Analytical Extract (MAX) long-term care file, and MAX personal summary file for 4 states (California, Ohio, New York, and T...

BACKGROUND In the US, Quality Indicators (QI's) profiling and comparing the performance of hospitals, health plans, nursing homes and physicians are routinely published for consumer review. We report the results of the largest study of inter-rater reliability done on nursing home assessments which generate the data used to derive publicly reported nursing home quality indicators. METHODS We s...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to determine whether the Minimum Data Set (MDS) 3.0 discharge record accurately identifies hospitalizations and deaths of nursing home residents. DESIGN We merged date of death from Medicare enrollment data and hospital inpatient claims with MDS discharge records to check whether the same information can be verified from both the sources. We examined ...