According to a recent study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, there is no significant correlation between the number of patients that a physician or nurse practitioner treats in a nursing home and the outcomes of these patients. The study, which analyzed factors such as readmissions and visits to the emergency department, reveals that the count of patients seen by a healthcare professional doesn’t appreciably impact the patient outcomes.
The study appeared in the JAMA Network on August 15, and employed Medicare Parts A and B claims from 77,723 clinicians, with data compiled from the nursing home minimum dataset spanning the years 2012 to 2019. This broad data pool encapsulated elderly adults who had been admitted to a nursing home and subsequently attended by a physician or an advanced practitioner. The study assessed the correlation between the number of patients taken care of by the clinicians and the consequential patient outcomes.
It was observed that a majority of clinicians (more than a half) carry a patient load of fewer than 10 per year. The study revealed that a smaller patient volume did not yield dissimilar outcomes compared to a larger patient volume. These findings remained consistent across different outcome measures, namely, rehospitalizations, successful discharge to the community, emergency department visits, and functional improvement at discharge from the nursing home. The study thus indicates that clinicians’ workload in terms of patient numbers doesn’t substantially result in varied patient outcomes in a nursing home setting.