Discharge to Community

The denominator has three exclusions (see below). 

First, stays for patients less than 55 years of age are excluded from the measure. 

Second, stays for which we do not where the patient entered from, or for which we do not observe the patient’s discharge, are excluded from being counted in the denominator. 

Third, stays with no available risk adjustment data (clinical and demographic characteristics listed in Section S.14) on any MDS assessment within 18 days of SNF admission are excluded from the measure.

Note, while not denominator exclusions, we also suppress the data for facilities that have fewer than 30 stays in the denominator, or for whom the percent of stays with a known outcome is less than 90%. The suppression of risk adjusted to community rates for facilities with fewer than 30 stays in the denominator is to improve the reliability of the measure, as detailed in the testing section (2b3). The suppression of rates for facilities for whom fewer than 90% of stays had a known outcome is done to improve the reliability of the measure and avoid perverse incentives about submitting MDS assessments for patients not discharged to the community.