Home Health Agencies With More Socially Vulnerable Patients Have Poorer Experience of Care Ratings

Objectives Examine the relationships between dual eligibility and race/ethnicity characteristics of Medicare-Certified Home Health Agencies (CHHAs) and experience of care ratings. Methods Analysis of 2017 national Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems and matched datasets of 10,906 CHHAs Results CHHAs with higher concentrations of dual-eligible patients were less likely to have high experience of care ratings for all three domains (e.g., for care delivery, quartile 4 vs. 1: odds ratio [OR] = 0.622, p < .001); CHHAs with higher concentrations of racial/ethnic minorities generally were less likely to have high experience of care ratings in care delivery (e.g., Black: quartile 4 vs. 1: OR = 0.418, p<0.001), communication (e.g., Black: quartile 4 vs. 1: OR = 0.316, p<0.001), and specific care issues (e.g., Hispanic: quartile 4 vs. 1: OR = 0.397, p < .001). Discussion CHHAs with greater concentrations of dual-eligible patients and racial/ethnic minorities were more likely to have poor experience of care ratings.