Medicare Shared Savings ACOs and Hospice Care for Ischemic Stroke Patients
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Palliative care services have the potential to improve the quality of end-of-life care and reduce cost. Services such as the Medicare hospice benefit, however, are often underutilized among stroke patients with a poor prognosis. We tested the hypothesis that the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) is associated with increased hospice enrollment and inpatient comfort measures only among incident ischemic stroke patients with a high mortality risk. DESIGN: A difference-in-differences design was used to compare outcomes before and after hospital participation in the MSSP for patients discharged from MSSP hospitals (N = 273) vs non-MSSP hospitals (N = 1490). SETTING: Records from a national registry, Get with the Guidelines (GWTG)-Stroke, were linked to Medicare hospice claims (2010-2015). PARTICIPANTS: Fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries age 65 and older hospitalized for incident ischemic stroke at a GWTG-Stroke hospital from January 2010 to December 2014 (N = 324 959). INTERVENTION: Discharge from an MSSP hospital or beneficiary alignment with an MSSP Accountable Care Organization (ACO). MEASUREMENTS: Hospice enrollment in the year following stroke. RESULTS: Among patients with high mortality risk, ACO alignment was associated with a 16% increase in odds of hospice enrollment (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 1.16; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.06-1.26), increasing the probability of hospice enrollment from 20% to 22%. In the low mortality risk group, discharge from an MSSP vs non-MSSP hospital was associated with a decrease in the predicted probability of inpatient comfort measures or discharge to hospice from 9% to 8% (OR = .82; CI = .74-.91), and ACO alignment was associated with reduced odds of a short stay (<7 days) (OR = .86; CI = .77-.96). CONCLUSION: Among ischemic stroke patients with severe stroke or indicators of high mortality risk, MSSP was associated with increased hospice enrollment. MSSP contract incentives may motivate improved end-of-life care among the subgroups most likely to benefit.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".