Is There Extra Cost of Institutional Care for MS Patients?

Figure 1

Medicare cost reports: flowchart. The hybrid cost function was estimated on a subset of SNFs including about 20% of facilities with more than 3% of annual residents-days attributed to patients with MS. The dependent variable was defined as logarithmic transformation of skilled nursing facility inpatient costs. The independent variables included facility percent of MS days, county-year mean of facility average wage, number of inpatient days and admissions, facility for-profit and ownership status, area competition index, and interactions between them. MS = multiple sclerosis; SNF = skilled nursing facility.