As a LeaRRn scholar, Dr. Black studied factors that influence functional outcomes in older adults in skilled nursing facilities. For his pilot project, with co-investigator, Rachel Prusynski, DPT, PhD, NCS of the University of Washington, they will pursue research on the following topic, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) SNF Quality Reporting Program (QRP) currently includes two measures of discharge function: Discharge Self-Care and Discharge Mobility. CMS has announced plans to add a third discharge function measure to the SNF QRP by 2025 and to the Value Based Purchasing (VBP) program in 2027. However, despite CMS’ position that functional status can influence discharge to community, prior research on the connection between function and community discharge from SNF is limited. Furthermore, the ability of the recently proposed discharge function measure to predict discharge to community compared to the two current measures, is unknown.  

The long-term goal of this research is to measure the value of rehabilitation services and guide practice of rehabilitation in SNFs. The overall goal of this project is to understand relationships between function and community discharge and to compare the predictive ability of multiple measures of function used in SNFs. The specific aims are: 1) estimate relationships between the current and proposed SNF discharge function measures and likelihood of discharge to the community, and 2) compare the predictive performance of the current and proposed SNF discharge function measures. This project is a secondary analysis of Medicare Part A SNF data collected in 2022 in 155 SNFs distributed across fifteen states owned and operated by a not-for-profit healthcare organization.