Sociodemographic, geographic and clinical factors associated with functional outcome and discharge location in US inpatient rehabilitation settings

ABSTRACT

Objective

To assess the impact of sociodemographic factors, clinical factors and regional differences on both patients’ functional outcome and discharge location in U.S. inpatient rehabilitation settings.

Methods

Using eRehabData, 536,453 admissions was used for functional outcome analyses (based on FIM gain) while 259,308 admissions was used for the discharge location analyses. Regression models were used to look at both outcomes.

Results

Having private insurance and being young and male was associated with the higher FIM gains while being African American, widowed, and living in the Midwest was associated with the lower FIM gains. Furthermore, having private insurance, being young, male, married and African American or Hispanic was associated with the lower odds of being discharged to a skilled nursing facility while living in the Midwest was associated with the greatest odds of being discharged to a skilled nursing facility. Clinical factors such as days from onset and length of stay also had a significant effect on both outcomes.

Conclusion

Our findings suggest that, in the U.S., one of the challenges to successful recovery in the inpatient rehabilitation setting includes insurance status (Medicare/Medicaid), race (African American) but also regional differences (Midwest) and length of stay.

KEYWORDS:

• Inpatient rehabilitation
• functional outcome
• discharge location

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Felice Loverso and the Casa Colina Foundation for supporting this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available. https://web2.erehabdata.com/erehabdata/index.jsp

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.