Spotlight on CSDE Affiliate, Tracy Mroz
Posted: 9/1/2020 (CSDE Research)
Dr. Tracy Mroz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, School of Medicine at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on the impact of health policy and delivery system factors on access to and quality of post-acute care services for older adults and adults with disabilities, with an emphasis on home health care and care provided in rural communities. As an investigator with the WWAMI Rural Health Research Center and the UW Center for Health Workforce Studies, she is leading studies on post-acute care in rural communities and therapy workforce.
Dr. Mroz and co-authors recently published an article in Health Affairs examining the effect of Medicare rural add-on payments on the number of home health agencies serving rural counties. Exploiting a pseudo-natural experiment created by variation in rural add-on payment amounts over time, the authors use publicly available data from Home Health Compare to examine how rural add-on payments affected the number of home health agencies serving rural counties from 2002-2017. They find that supply changes are similar in rural counties adjacent to urban areas and in urban counties regardless of add-on payments, however only higher add-on payments keep supply changes in rural counties not adjacent to urban areas on pace with those in urban counties. To read the article, please click here.