About

Momotazur Rahman is a Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice with a research focus on the economics of aging. His work considers issues related to the effects of patients’ choice of healthcare provider on health outcomes and healthcare utilization patterns, the impact of regulations on healthcare markets, disparities in healthcare quality among racial and socio-economic groups, and the influence of Medicare Advantage on the healthcare system. He aims to apply and develop econometric techniques to provide causal insights into these areas. With over 110 publications in leading journals such as the Journal of Health Economics, Health Affairs, Alzheimer’s and Dementia, and JAMA, Rahman has contributed significantly to the field supported by the National Institute on Aging and various foundations. He has led multiple research projects, including five as Principal Investigator, and has served as a main methodologist or co-investigator on numerous studies. In addition to his research, he has taught graduate-level courses in health services research methods and served as an advisor to doctoral students, post-doctoral fellows, and junior faculty members, fostering the next generation of health policy researchers.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Gerontology
• Medicine
• Environmental health
• Economic growth
• Demography
• Economics

Selected publications

• Dialysis Facility Participation In Medicare Advantage Networks Was Highest For Large Dialysis Organizations In 2021

  Health Affairs · 2025-03-01 · 1 citations

  article

  The share of patients with kidney failure enrolled in Medicare Advantage (MA) increased from 27 percent to 47 percent after the implementation of the 21st Century Cures Act, which expanded MA eligibility to all kidney failure patients. In this mixed-methods study, we examined the characteristics of dialysis facilities participating in MA contracts in 2021, and we supplemented the findings with data from qualitative interviews with representatives from MA plans and dialysis provider organizations. In 2021, dialysis facilities contracted with approximately 60 percent of MA plans offered in their and neighboring counties. In adjusted analyses, facilities affiliated with the two large dialysis organizations had 33-40 percentage points higher participation in MA networks compared with independent, not-for-profit facilities. Interviews suggest that large dialysis organizations had a unique advantage in their negotiations with MA plans. It is important for policy makers to understand how MA enrollment growth among people with kidney failure may be accelerating consolidation in the dialysis market.

  PublisherDOI

• Reply to: “Comment on: Differences in Setting of Initial Dementia Diagnosis Among Fee‐for‐Service Medicare Beneficiaries”

  Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2025-01-07

  letterOpen accessSenior author

  See the related comment by Wu et al . in this issue.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Trends in hospital discharge outcomes among high-risk Medicare beneficiaries before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

  Health Affairs Scholar · 2025-03-18 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Introduction: Medicare beneficiaries face significant health risks and care disruptions during public health emergencies, but little is known about how care patterns evolved throughout the COVID-19 pandemic or differed between traditional Medicare (TM) and Medicare Advantage (MA). Methods: Using Medicare claims data for over 20 million hospital discharges during 2018-2022, we examined trends in hospital length of stay, discharge disposition, and mortality among beneficiaries with 5 major comorbidities (dementia, diabetes, congestive heart failure, hip fracture, and stroke), stratified by COVID status and payer type. Results: We found that COVID patients initially experienced substantially longer hospital stays (8.3 vs 4.6 days) and higher 30-day mortality (34% vs 5%) compared to patients without COVID. MA beneficiaries showed consistently higher home health utilization but similar mortality patterns to TM enrollees. By mid-2022, most outcome differences had converged between COVID and non-COVID patients, suggesting health system adaptation to the pandemic. Conclusion: Our findings highlight how the pandemic was associated with shifts toward home-based post-acute care, emphasizing the need for policies supporting home-based care infrastructure and flexible care delivery models that could help health systems better adapt during future public health emergencies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Hospital Mergers and Acquisitions From 2010 to 2019: Creating a Valid Public Use Database

  Health Services Research · 2025-05-12 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  OBJECTIVE: To create, analyze, and distribute the Strategic Hospital Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) Database, a detailed resource of hospital M&As from 2010 to 2019. STUDY SETTING AND DESIGN: We conducted more than 2000 Internet searches to supplement, verify, and correct M&A identifications of American Hospital Association (AHA) survey data. We assessed the accuracy of the AHA survey and performed staggered difference-in-differences analyses to estimate the impact of measurement error on treatment effects capturing shifts in our measure of hospital market power. DATA SOURCES AND ANALYTIC SAMPLE: We analyzed 1537 M&A-related ownership changes from 2010 to 2019 from our analytic sample of 4896 unique acute care general hospitals or critical access hospitals derived from the AHA Annual Survey dataset. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The AHA survey dataset correctly identified the M&A deal completion year for only 40.1% of M&A-related ownership changes. The improved accuracy and granular treatment indicators of our database corrected for underestimations of the impact of hospital consolidation on hospital market power, yielding an effect estimate over 200% higher than the uncorrected data. CONCLUSIONS: By reducing errors in hospital M&A identification, our database can enhance the quality of studies investigating the effects of hospital consolidation on healthcare access and health outcomes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Hospitalizations and Mortality Following Skilled Nursing Facility Admission by Opioid Use Disorder Status

  Journal of Addiction Medicine · 2025-05-15

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  OBJECTIVES: Prior studies have documented rising rates of referrals to skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) for hospitalized patients with opioid use disorder (OUD). However, the care transitions and survival of people with OUD who enter SNFs have not been evaluated. We examined differences in hospital readmissions and mortality between individuals with and without OUD discharged to SNFs. METHODS: Using 2016-2020 100% Medicare inpatient claims, we identified acute hospitalizations with discharge to SNFs. We matched each beneficiary with OUD with up to 5 without OUD based on age, sex, low-income subsidy status, and residential county. Outcomes were hospital readmissions and all-cause mortality within 180 days following hospital discharge. Inverse-probability weighting (IPW) covariates included demographics, state of residence, year of SNF admission, intensive care use, Gagne comorbidity score, and conditions associated with SNF admission or that disproportionately affect people with OUD. Unadjusted and IPW-adjusted risk differences were calculated. RESULTS: There were 30,922 fee-for-service beneficiaries with OUD and 137,454 matched beneficiaries without OUD, with a mean age of ~71 years. Of those with OUD, 5.3% had evidence of receiving medications for OUD. In unadjusted analyses, beneficiaries with OUD had higher readmission risk (44.5% vs 27.9%) and comparable mortality risk (17.8% vs 16.5%) relative to beneficiaries without OUD. After adjustment through IPW, there were minimal differences in mortality; however, beneficiaries with OUD remained at a greater risk for readmissions than those without OUD. CONCLUSIONS: Hospital readmissions were dramatically higher among Medicare beneficiaries with OUD than those without OUD, suggesting that important gaps in OUD care exist in SNFs.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Is Managed Care Effective in Long-term Care Settings? Evidence from Medicare Institutional Special Needs Plans

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-09-01 · 1 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Nursing homes face unique financial incentives that encourage under-investment in onsite clinical capabilities and overreliance on hospitals to triage and care for residents with dementia, contributing to high levels of health care spending for this population.A proposed solution to align incentives are Institutional Special Needs Plans (I-SNPs), which combine capitated financing with plan-provided onsite clinician presence.Using 12 million resident-quarters of data from 2016-2022, we exploit the timing of nursing homes' I-SNP contracting to instrument for plan enrollment and estimate causal effects on hospitalization and other health outcomes.We found that I-SNP enrollment reduced quarterly hospitalization rates by 3 to 4 percentage points, which equates to one third of hospitalizations relative to the sample mean.We do not find consistent evidence of an impact on other health outcomes and quality of care indicators.

  PublisherDOI

• Trends in Private Equity Acquisitions of Assisted Living Facilities

  JAMA Network Open · 2025-11-17

  articleOpen access

  This cross-sectional study examines trends in private equity acquisitions of assisted living facilities across the US.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Safeguarding healthcare workers in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine

  BMJ Global Health · 2025-02-01 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access

  SUMMARY BOX International humanitarian law stipulates specific obligations during armed conflict, including the protection of healthcare and humanitarian workers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Immigrant Staff in Nursing Homes: Mitigating Staffing Shortages During the COVID-19 Pandemic

  Medical Care Research and Review · 2025-06-29 · 1 citations

  article

  The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated staffing shortages in U.S. nursing homes. Staff who are immigrants may have stronger tendencies to remain in their jobs than U.S.-born staff, but evidence is lacking. In this study, we predicted the share of immigrant staff and used a difference-in-differences regression to investigate whether nursing homes with a higher vs. lower proportion of immigrant certified nursing assistants (CNAs) experienced lesser declines in staff hours per resident day (HPRD) during the pandemic. We found that facilities with a larger-than-median predicted share of immigrant staff exhibited a relatively smaller decrease in CNA HPRD by 0.03 HPRD, equivalent to a 1.4% difference of the sample mean. We further found that CNA turnover rates during the pandemic were lower in facilities with relatively higher shares of immigrant staff. Our findings suggest that nursing homes with more immigrant staff may be more resilient in meeting staffing needs during crises.

  PublisherDOI

• Differences in Skilled Nursing Facilities Admitting Medicare Patients With and Without COVID-19 After Hospitalization

  Journal of General Internal Medicine · 2025-07-08

  letterOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Rural-Urban Disparity in Post-Acute Care

  NIH · $425k · 2017–2019

• Nursing Home Selection of Medicare Advantage Patients and Its Implications on Health Outcomes

  NIH · $163k · 2016–2019

• Disparity in Incidence and Health Outcomes between Rural and Urban Patients with Alzheimers disease and related disorders

  NIH · $163k · 2017–2020

• The Impact of Advanced Practice Clinicians on End of Life Outcomes for Older Adults with Dementia

  NIH · $1.3M · 2020–2023

• Data Management and Methods Core

  NIH · $54.2M · 2007–2029

Frequent coauthors

• Vincent Mor

  Providence College

  223 shared

• Amal N. Trivedi

  Providence VA Medical Center

  112 shared

• Kali S. Thomas

  Johns Hopkins University

  104 shared

• Cyrus M. Kosar

  Brown University

  64 shared

• Elizabeth M. White

  63 shared

• David J. Meyers

  Brown University

  59 shared

• Pedro Gozalo

  Providence College

  58 shared

• Portia Y. Cornell

  Brown University

  56 shared

Education

• PhD, Economics

  Brown University

  2010

• MA, Economics

  Brown University

  2006

• Master of Social Science, Economics

  University of Dhaka

  2003

• Bachelor of Social Science, Economics

  University of Dhaka

  2002