Medicare Beneficiaries Living In Housing With Supportive Services Experienced Lower Hospital Use Than Others

There is strong evidence that housing conditions affect

population health, but evidence is limited on the extent to which housing

with supportive social services can maintain population health and

reduce the use of expensive hospital services. We examined a nonprofit,

community-based program in Queens, New York, that supplied affordable

housing with supportive social services to elderly Medicare beneficiaries.

We evaluated whether this program reduced hospital use, including

hospital discharges for ambulatory care–sensitive conditions (ACSCs).

We compared hospital use among an intervention group residing in six

high-rise buildings in two neighborhoods to that among their Medicare

counterparts living in the same neighborhoods but in different buildings.

We found that hospital discharge rates were 32 percent lower, hospital

lengths-of-stay one day shorter, and ACSC rates 30 percent lower among

residents in the intervention group than among people in the

comparison group. This suggests that investments in housing with

supportive social services have the potential to reduce hospital use and

thereby decrease spending for vulnerable older patients.