Patients with diabetes appear to generate a high number of visits per episode and, therefore, provide great revenue potential for home health agencies. That's why we take a look at the incidence of diabetes, endocrine, and metabolic diagnoses in Medicare home health patients. In this article, we show the incidence of diabetes, endocrine, and metabolic illnesses in Medicare home health patients. This metric is determined by calculating the percentage of discharged Medicare patients who have these diagnoses compared to the total number of Medicare discharges.
By analyzing 2007 Medicare claims data on a state-by-state basis, we can conclude the following:
On average, 34.9% of all discharged Medicare home health patients in the United States were diagnosed with diabetes, endocrine, or metabolic illnesses.
As the graphic shows, however, there is significant variation in the incidence of these diagnoses among the state quartiles. At 39.1%, the highest quartile is approximately one-third greater than the lowest quartile at 29.4%.
There is also wide variation in the incidence of these diagnoses among individual states. The state with lowest incidence is Colorado (25.9%), while Louisiana had the highest incidence (44.7%). This translates into an almost 50% difference.
This metric indicates that people in different parts of the country have different lifestyles, which appear to be affecting individuals' health in those states. In a previous article, we demonstrated that Louisiana also has the highest recent rate in the country. Thus, the high incidence of chronic disease may partially explain high levels of chronic patients, as well.
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