Post-Acute Care Spending After Surgery Driven By Care Setting

The costs of post-acute surgical care vary with the choice of care setting, not the intensity of services provided for Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries recovering from total hip replacement, coronary artery bypass grafting, and colectomy. Post-acute care costs varied across four settings— home health care, outpatient rehabilitation, skilled nursing facility, or inpatient rehabilitation facility— by 129% for total hip replacement, 103% for coronary artery bypass grafting, and 82% for colectomy. Hospitals that sent a greater proportion of beneficiaries to inpatient rehabilitation facilities and skilled nursing facilities had higher spending on post-acute care than hospitals that sent . . .