Resource Utilization Groups (RUGs)
09/02/2009
Hilltop’s Director of Special Research and Development, Tony Tucker, gave this presentation to the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) Long-Term Care Payment Advisory Committee (LTC PAC). It describes RUGs, the LTC minimum data set (MDS) as it is used to assign RUGs to nursing facility (NF) residents, and Hilltop’s process to refine MDS data to examine patterns of care. Hilltop refined MDS data were also used to show the distribution of Maryland’s NF residents, as well as measures of length of NF stays, by RUG level and payor.