Dual eligible patients are not the same: How social risk may impact quality measurement's ability to reduce inequities

BACKGROUND: CMS recently decided to produce private “healthcare disparities reports” that include dual eligibility (DE) as the sole stratifying variable used to assess pneumonia readmission disparities. RESEARCH DESIGN: We measure the relationship between DE status and readmissions, both with and without conceptually relevant social risk factors, including air pollution, severe housing problems, and food insecurity, using data from county- and hospital-level readmission rates, DE status, and social risk factors. RESULTS: At the county level, the relationship between DE status and readmissions is partially confounded by at least three social risk factors. DE populations vary widely across hospitals, creating unequal between-hospital comparisons. CONCLUSIONS: Because of differences in the DE population, between-hospital comparisons could be misleading using a methodology that stratifies by DE only. We suggest viable alternatives to sole-factor stratification to properly account for social risk factors and better isolate quality differences that might yield readmission rate inequities. IMPLICATIONS: CMS's healthcare disparities reports provided to hospitals are limited by relying exclusively on DE proportion as the measure of social risk, undercutting the power of quality measurement and its related incentives to close or minimize healthcare inequities.