Do the effect of major and minor depression on Medicare home healthcare services use?
It seems likely that any potential incremental depression effect on utilization is being offset by the transitional medical state of the patients that entered Medicare home healthcare directly from a hospital, nursing home, or rehabilitation facility, and the overall severity of disability and chronic illness present in long-term home healthcare patients. Further research is required to determine whether similar findings occur in other home healthcare agencies and whether these are present under the current Medicare Prospective Payment System reimbursement mechanism.
Patients who have undergone DSAEK may experience accelerated endothelial cell loss after a subsequent PPV procedure but the extra cell loss should not pose a short-term risk to graft viability unless the endothelial cell density was already borderline.