Nursing home revenue source and information availability during the XXXX evaluation of nursing home residents.

@entity1 @entity341
OBJECTIVES: Lack of access to medical information for nursing home residents during @entity341 ( @entity341 ) evaluation is a barrier to quality care. We hypothesized that the quantity of information available in the @entity341 differs based on the funding source of the resident's nursing home. DESIGN: Cross-sectional observational study. SETTING: Single academic @entity341 . @entity1 : @entity1 were 128 skilled nursing facility (SNF) residents age 65 or older from 12 SNFs. MEASUREMENTS: Emergency physicians documented knowledge of 9 essential information items. SNFs were categorized as accepting or not accepting Medicaid. RESULTS: Questionnaires were completed for 128 @entity1 , of whom 95 (74%) were from 1 of 8 Medicaid-funded SNFs and 33 (26%) were from 1 of 4 SNFs not accepting Medicaid. @entity1 from SNFs accepting Medicaid were younger (79 versus 87, P < .001) and less frequently white (62% versus 97%, P < .001). The mean number of 9 possible information items available was lower for @entity1 from SNFs that accept Medicaid (7.13 versus 8.15, P < .001). Emergency providers also reported lower satisfaction regarding access to information for residents from SNFs that accept Medicaid (P < .05). The association between residence in an SNF that accepts Medicaid and lower @entity341 information scores remained after linear regression with clustering by SNF controlling for age, gender, and race. The most common source of information for residents from both types of SNFs was transfer papers from the SNF. CONCLUSION: Less information is available to @entity341 providers for @entity1 from SNFs that accept Medicaid than for residents from SNFs that do not accept Medicaid. Further study is needed to examine this information gap.
