A new study revealed that of the Medicaid beneficiaries who were recently diagnosed with cancer, one in seven (14%) received care at a nursing home, and more than half of these individuals were using a nursing home for the first time.
This population of residents often have high needs and high healthcare costs. So for nursing homes to ensure less restrictive care, they must be fully equipped to meet their particular needs, Harvard University researcher Amanda C. Chen, Ph.D., said.
“Nursing home residents with cancer likely have specific clinical and care needs that differ from other residents – and likely differ depending on whether they are admitted to a nursing home after an acute hospitalization or from the community due to potential differences in acuity and needs,” Chen told _McKnight’s_ on Wednesday.
These needs may include access to services, including palliative care consultations, infusion chemotherapy or other chemotherapy drugs, care coordination and other rehabilitation services, Chen added.
Such patients’ entrance into a skilled nursing facility may be limited, according to the [study](https://agsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jgs.19391?saml_referrer=) featured in the _Journal of the American Geriatrics Society_ and co-authored by Harvard’s David C. Grabowski.
Chemotherapy drugs, for instance, are not covered under a Medicare Part A SNF stay.
That creates “a financial burden to care for cancer patients — both for the nursing facility, which does not have to cover the costs of chemotherapy, and for short-stay patients, who face a major coverage gap,” the researchers wrote.
Chen and Grabowski used data from the Minimum Data Set 3.0 and Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System Analytic Files to determine the study group and analyze nearly 340,000 claims from 2016 to 2019.
Approximately 80% of those Medicaid patients newly diagnosed with cancer had no nursing home use during the study period, but nearly 4% had a nursing home stay prior to their cancer diagnosis (but not after) and about 5% had a nursing home stay before and after their cancer diagnosis.
Chen said future studies should focus on access and better understanding quality of care for nursing home residents with cancer.
“Do cancer patients experience greater difficulty finding a nursing home to receive care? Do they receive care from lower quality nursing homes?” Chen asked. “What are the characteristics of nursing homes which have higher shares of cancer patients? Does receiving care from one of these nursing homes lead to better outcomes?”
Compared to recently diagnosed patients who did not use nursing homes, Medicaid recipients were older and had long nursing home stays.
The top five cancers observed that accounted for the longest short and long nursing home stays included cancers of the lung, breast, hematologic cancer, colon and prostate.