Agency Closings and Changes in Medicare Home Health Use: 1996-1999

Implementation of the 1997 Balanced Budget Act's home health provisions dramatically reduced Medicare home health utilization and led to closures of many agencies. This paper examined the potential effects of the agency closings on beneficiary utilization rates. Findings suggest that agency closings, per se, had only a very small impact on changes in utilization rates between 1996 and 1999. [27 PDF pages]