Home Health Care Use Among Medicare Beneficiaries From 2010 to 2020

Medicare home health coverage is an important resource for Medicare beneficiaries requiring health care at home. However, there have been changes in the United States health care system that might impact home health utilization such as pressures to constrain Medicare spending, growth in Medicare Advantage (MA) plan enrollment, decline in institutional long-term care and growth of Medicaid home- and community-based services. Given these changes, we examined home health care use trends among beneficiaries enrolled in traditional Medicare (TM) and MA from 2010 to 2020. We separately examined home health episodes that were initiated after a hospital or skilled nursing facility discharge and those initiated within the community and among dually and non-dually eligible beneficiaries. Home health use decreased among TM enrollees for both community-initiated and post-discharge needs but increased among MA enrollees for community-initiated home health use. Increases in community-initiated home health use were concentrated in non-dually eligible beneficiaries.