Dementia Severity Associated With Increased Risk of Potentially Preventable Readmissions During Home Health Care

Approximately 14% of Medicare beneficiaries are readmitted to a hospital within 30 days of home health care admission. Individuals with dementia account for 30% of all home health care admissions and are at high risk for readmission. Our primary objective was to determine the association between dementia severity at admission to home health care and 30-day potentially preventable readmissions (PPR) during home health care. A secondary objective was to develop a dementia severity scale from Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS) items based on the Functional Assessment Staging Tool (FAST).