Certificate of need and the cost of competition in home healthcare markets.

Certificate of need and the cost of competition in home healthcare markets. Home Health Care Serv Q. 2020 Feb 14;:1-14 Authors: Ettner SL, Zinn JS, Xu H, Ladd H, Nuccio E, Sorkin DH, Mukamel DB Abstract We used 2010-16 Medicare Cost Reports for 10,737 freestanding home health agencies (HHAs) to examine the impact of home health (HH) and nursing home (NH) certificate-of-need (CON) laws on HHA caseload, total and per-patient variable costs. After adjusting for other HHA characteristics, total costs were higher in states with only HH CON laws ($2,975,698), only NH CON laws ($1,768,097), and both types of laws ($3,511,277), compared with no CON laws ($1,538,536). Higher costs were driven by caseloads, as CON reduced per-patient costs. Additional research is needed to distinguish whether this is due to skimping on quality vs. economies of scale. PMID: 32058854 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Home Health Care Services Quarterly - Category: Nursing Tags: Home Health Care Serv Q Source Type: research