Rise of Post–Acute Care Facilities as a Discharge Destination of US Hospitalizations

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Abstract
Medicare’s payment reforms in the 1990s significantly affected hospital length of stay and post–acute care (PAC) (eg, skilled nursing or rehabilitation) facility use.1,2 However, few studies describe contemporary length of stay and postdischarge care trends in a nationally representative sample of Medicare and non-Medicare patients. We sought to understand these trends using the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) from 1996 to 2010.