Differences in Oral Medication Management Improvements by Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status in Home Health Care

Abstract

While improving patients’ abilities to manage medications is important for home health care patients for a successful recovery, we have a limited understanding on differences in the improvement by neighborhood disadvantage. Thus, we examined whether improvements in oral medication management vary by neighborhood socioeconomic status among Medicare home health care patients. Our findings show the odds of improvement in oral medication management for patients in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods were 1.13 times higher (95% CI, 1.11-1.14; p < .001) than those from less disadvantaged neighborhoods. At the same time, we also find that patients in the most disadvantaged (33.6%) were more likely to be excluded due to inpatient facility transitions, compared to patients in less disadvantaged neighborhoods (26.6%). The excluded sample due to inpatient facility transition was more associated with higher ADL scores, risks of hospitalizations, and prevalence in the majority of the chronic condition indicators compared to the main sample.