Analysis of patient-level Medicare home health claims in Texas linked to federal disaster declarations examined how Hurricane Harvey altered the delivery of in-home clinical services during 2017-2018. Storm-affected counties saw interruption in the continuity of skilled visits for older adults who depend on them for wound care, medication management, rehabilitation, and chronic disease monitoring. Continuity of care in the home emerges as a measurable vulnerability point when regional infrastructure fails.
Key Points
- Hurricane Harvey disrupted home health visit delivery across disaster-declared Texas counties
- Medicare claims linked to FEMA declarations quantified service interruption patterns
- Homebound older adults face concentrated risk when care continuity breaks
Longevity Analysis
Healthspan in later decades depends heavily on uninterrupted maintenance — wound healing supervised, medications reconciled, mobility rehabilitated, fluid status watched. When a regional event severs that thread, the loss is not a missed appointment but a stalled recovery trajectory, and the physiological cost of acute displacement stress compounds it. Building redundancy into care delivery, and identifying which patients cannot absorb a two-week gap, belongs in any serious framework for aging in place.
Original published by SAGE Research on Aging, by Chih-Ying Li, Md Ibrahim Tahashilder, Yong-Fang Kuo, Nicole Errett, Amber K. Sabbatini, Tracy M. Mroz1Department of Occupational Therapy, School of Health Professions, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, USA2Department of Population Health & Health Disparities, School of Public and Population Health, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, USA3Department of Biostatistics & Data Science, School of Public and Population Health, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, USA47284Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA57284Department of Emergency Medicine; Department of Health Systems & Population Health, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA6Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.