Incidence of Poststroke Depression in Patients With Poststroke Dysphagia.

PURPOSE: Poststroke dysphagia and poststroke depression (PSD) can have devastating effects on stroke survivors, including increased burden of care, higher health care costs, poor quality of life, and greater mortality; however, there is a dearth of research examining depression in patients diagnosed with dysphagia after stroke. Thus, we aimed to study the incidence of PSD in patients with poststroke dysphagia to provide foundational knowledge about this patient population. METHOD: We conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional study of individuals with a primary diagnosis of acute ischemic stroke (AIS) and secondary diagnoses of dysphagia and/or depression using administrative claims data from the 2017 Medicare 5% Limited Data Set. RESULTS: The proportion of depression diagnosis in patients with poststroke dysphagia was significantly higher than the proportion of depression diagnosis in those without poststroke dysphagia during acute hospitalization: 12.01% versus 9.52%, respectively (p = .003). CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrated that persons with poststroke dysphagia were as, or slightly more, likely to have PSD compared to the general stroke population, and to our knowledge, they establish the first reported incidence of PSD in Medicare patients with dysphagia after AIS. Future research is warranted to further explore the effects of PSD on poststroke dysphagia.

Impact of Community Health Workers on Access to Care for Rural Populations in the United States: A Systematic Review.

Community Health Worker (CHW) interventions have shown potential to reduce inequities for underserved populations. However, there is a lack of support for CHW integration in the delivery of health care. This may be of particular importance in rural areas in the Unites States where access to care remains problematic. This review aims to describe CHW interventions and their outcomes in rural populations in the US. Peer reviewed literature was searched in PubMed and PsycINFO for articles published in English from 2015 to February 2021. Title and abstract screening was performed followed by full text screening. Quality of the included studies was assessed using the Downs and Black score. A total of 26 studies met inclusion criteria. The largest proportion were pre-post program evaluation or cohort studies (46.2%). Many described CHW training (69%). Almost a third (30%) indicated the CHW was integrated within the health care team. Interventions aimed to provide health education (46%), links to community resources (27%), or both (27%). Chronic conditions were the concern for most interventions (38.5%) followed by women's health (34.6%). Nearly all studies reported positive improvement in measured outcomes. In addition, studies examining cost reported positive return on investment. This review offers a broad overview of CHW interventions in rural settings in the United States. It provides evidence that CHW can improve access to care in rural settings and may represent a cost-effective investment for the healthcare system.

Linking Existing Instruments to Develop an Activity of Daily Living Item Bank.

This study examined dimensionality and item-level psychometric properties of an item bank measuring activities of daily living (ADL) across inpatient rehabilitation facilities and community living centers. Common person equating method was used in the retrospective veterans data set. This study examined dimensionality, model fit, local independence, and monotonicity using factor analyses and fit statistics, principal component analysis (PCA), and differential item functioning (DIF) using Rasch analysis. Following the elimination of invalid data, 371 veterans who completed both the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) and minimum data set (MDS) within 6 days were retained. The FIM-MDS item bank demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach's α = .98) and met three rating scale diagnostic criteria and three of the four model fit statistics (comparative fit index/Tucker-Lewis index = 0.98, root mean square error of approximation = 0.14, and standardized root mean residual = 0.07). PCA of Rasch residuals showed the item bank explained 94.2% variance. The item bank covered the range of θ from -1.50 to 1.26 (item), -3.57 to 4.21 (person) with person strata of 6.3. The findings indicated the ADL physical function item bank constructed from FIM and MDS measured a single latent trait with overall acceptable item-level psychometric properties, suggesting that it is an appropriate source for developing efficient test forms such as short forms and computerized adaptive tests.

Stroke Administrative Severity Index: using administrative data for 30-day poststroke outcomes prediction.

AIM: Current stroke severity scales cannot be used for archival data. We develop and validate a measure of stroke severity at hospital discharge (Stroke Administrative Severity Index [SASI]) for use in billing data. METHODS: We used the NIH Stroke Scale (NIHSS) as the theoretical framework and identified 285 relevant International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision diagnosis and procedure codes, grouping them into 23 indicator variables using cluster analysis. A 60% sample of stroke patients in Medicare data were used for modeling risk of 30-day postdischarge mortality or discharge to hospice, with validation performed on the remaining 40% and on data with NIHSS scores. RESULTS: Model fit was good (p > 0.05) and concordance was strong (C-statistic = 0.76-0.83). The SASI predicted NIHSS at discharge (C = 0.83). CONCLUSION: The SASI model and score provide important tools to control for stroke severity at time of hospital discharge. It can be used as a risk-adjustment variable in administrative data analyses to measure postdischarge outcomes.

Impact of Outpatient Rehabilitation Medicare Reimbursement Caps on Utilization and Cost of Rehabilitation Care After Ischemic Stroke: Do Caps Contain Costs?

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the proportion of patients with ischemic stroke who fall within and above the total outpatient rehabilitation caps before and after the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 took effect; and to estimate the cost of poststroke outpatient rehabilitation cost and resource utilization in these patients before and after the implementation of the caps. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. SETTING: Medicare reimbursement system. PARTICIPANTS: Medicare beneficiaries from the state of South Carolina: the 1997 stroke cohort sample (N=2667) and the 2004 stroke cohort sample (N=2679). INTERVENTIONS: Not applicable. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Proportion of beneficiaries with bills within and above the cap before and after the cap was enacted, and total estimated 1-year rehabilitation Medicare payments before and after the cap. RESULTS: The proportion of patients with stroke exceeding the cap in 2004 after the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 was enacted was significantly lower (5.8%) than those in 1997 (9.5%) had there been a cap at that time (P=.004). However, when the proportion of individuals exceeding the cap among both the outpatient provider and facility files was examined, there was a greater proportion of patients with stroke in 2004 (64.6%) than in 1997 (31.9%) who exceeded the cap (P<.0001). The estimated average 1-year Medicare payments for rehabilitation services, when examining only the Part B outpatient provider bills, did not differ between the cohorts (P=.12), and in fact, decreased slightly from $1052 in 1997 to $833 in 2004. However, when examining rehabilitation costs using all available outpatient Medicare bills, the average estimated payments greatly increased (P<.0001) from $5691 in 1997 to $9606 in 2004. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that billing practices may have changed after outpatient rehabilitation services caps were enacted by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Rehabilitation services billing may have shifted from Part B provider bills to being more frequently included in facility charges.

Marginal costing methods highlight the contributing cost of comorbid conditions in Medicare patients: a quasi-experimental case-control study of ischemic stroke costs.

BACKGROUND: Cost of illness studies are needed to provide estimates for input into cost-effectiveness studies and as information drivers to resource allocation. However, these studies often do not differentiate costs associated with the disease of interest and costs of co-morbidities. The goal of this study was to identify the 1-year cost of ischemic stroke compared to the annual cost of care for a comparable non-stroke group of South Carolina (SC) Medicare beneficiaries resulting in a marginal cost estimate. METHODS: SC data for 2004 and 2005 were used to estimate the mean 12 month cost of stroke for 2,976 Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized for Ischemic Stroke in 2004. Using nearest neighbor propensity score matching, a control group of non-stroke beneficiaries were matched on age, gender, race, risk factors, and Charlson comorbidity index and their costs were calculated. Marginal cost attributable to ischemic stroke was calculated as the difference between these two adjusted cost estimates. RESULTS: The total cost estimated for SC stroke patients for 1 year (2004) was $81.3 million. The cost for the matched comparison group without stroke was $54.4 million. Thus, the 2004 marginal costs to Medicare due to Ischemic stroke in SC are estimated to be $26.9 million. CONCLUSIONS: Accurate estimates of cost of care for conditions, such as stroke, that are common in older patients with a high rate of comorbid conditions require the use of a marginal costing approach. Over estimation of cost of care for stroke may lead to prediction of larger savings than realizable from important stroke treatment and prevention programs, which may damage the credibility of program advocates, and jeopardize long term funding support. Additionally, correct cost estimates are needed as inputs for valid cost-effectiveness studies. Thus, it is important to use marginal costing for stroke, especially with the increasing public focus on evidence-based economic decision making to be expected with healthcare reform.