Service utilization and outcomes in rural home health agencies.

As home health reimbursement moves from fee-for-service to prospective payment, data describing the relationship between service utilization and patient outcomes will be the basis for planning services. The investigators measured the relationship between service utilization and generic patient outcomes for 1,704 home health episodes of care. Few significant relationships were found. The average study patient received 17 visits, well below the average number for the state and nation. Investigators suggested the possibility that visit numbers were too low to stimulate improvement in outcomes and that when services are curtailed, home health staff may do well to focus quality improvement efforts on condition-specific patient outcomes rather than generic outcomes.