Association Between Outpatient Rehabilitation Therapy and Total Cost of Care for a Frail Elderly Population in a Medicare Accountable Care Organization

摘要

Frailty is a debilitating and increasingly costly condition in an elderly population equating to nearly $7.6 billion in Medicare spending in 2016. Understanding the burden of frailty and how to manage this population efficiently is of key importance in an accountable care organization. Using an operational, claims-derived definition of frailty, the authors set out to explore the association between therapy and total cost of care for the frail elderly population. Claims data were reviewed for nearly 94,000 beneficiaries to identify the burden of frailty in that population along with the association with therapy utilization. Nearly 10% of patients in the study populations were found to meet the operational definition of frailty. When the frail population is segmented into those who receive outpatient rehabilitation therapy and those who do not, outpatient rehabilitation therapy is associated with decreased cost at 13–32 therapy units delivered. Outside of this dose range, outpatient rehabilitation therapy was not associated with statistically significant improvements in total cost of care for this population. Results suggest that from the standpoint of population health management, utilization of outpatient rehabilitation services may be helpful to decrease costs in several domains. When that cost reduction is compared to therapy units delivered, it is demonstrated that outpatient rehabilitation therapy is associated with lower costs at a certain quantity of therapy. This study has implications for population health management of a frail elderly cohort as well as for managing preferred partnerships with therapy providers, given the wide array of therapy patterns delivered.