Do Hospitals Participating in Accountable Care Organizations Discharge Patients to Higher Quality Nursing Homes?

We examined whether hospitals participating in Medicare's Shared Saving Program increased the use of highly rated skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) or decreased the use of low-rated SNFs hospital-wide after initiation of their accountable care organization (ACO) contracts compared with non-ACO hospitals. Using a difference-in-differences design, we estimated the change in the probability of discharge to 5-star and 1-star SNFs among all beneficiaries discharged from ACO-participating hospitals after the hospital initiated ACO participation. After joining an ACO, the percentage of hospital discharges going to a high-quality SNF increased by 3.4 percentage points on a base of 15.4% (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.3-5.5, P = .002) compared with non-ACO-participating hospitals. The probability of discharge from an ACO-participating hospital to low-quality SNFs did not change significantly compared with non-ACO-participating hospitals. Our findings indicate that ACO-participating hospitals were more likely to discharge patients to highly rated SNFs after they began their ACO contract but did not change the likelihood of discharge to lower rated SNFs in comparison with non-ACO hospitals.