Health Spending By State Of Residence, 1991–2004

Multiscale analysis of cancer service areas in the United States

The purpose of delineating Cancer Service Areas (CSAs) is to define a reliable unit of analysis, more meaningful than geopolitical units such as states and counties, for examining geographic variations of the cancer care markets using geographic information systems (GIS). This study aims to provide a multiscale analysis of the U.S. cancer care markets based on the 2014-2015 Medicare claims of cancer-directed surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. The CSAs are delineated by a scale-flexible network community detection algorithm automated in GIS so that the patient flows are maximized within CSAs and minimized between them. The multiscale CSAs include those comparable in size to those 4 census regions, 9 divisions, 50 states, and also 39 global optimal CSAs that generates the highest modularity value. The CSAs are more effective in capturing the U.S. cancer care markets because of its higher localization index, lower cross-border utilizations, and shorter travel time. The first two comparisons reveal that only a few regions or divisions are representative of the underlying cancer care markets. The last two comparisons find that among the 39 CSAs, 54% CSAs comprise multiple states anchored by cities near inner state borders, 28% are single-state CSAs, and 18% are sub-state CSAs. Their (in)consistencies across state borders or within each state shed new light on where the intervention of cancer care delivery or the adjustment of cancer care costs are needed to meet the challenges in the U.S. cancer care system. The findings could guide stakeholders to target public health policies for more effective coordination of cancer care in improving outcomes and reducing unnecessary costs.

Causes of regional variation in Dutch healthcare expenditures: Evidence from movers

We assess the relative importance of demand and supply factors as determinants of regional variation in healthcare expenditures in the Netherlands. Our empirical approach follows individuals who migrate between regions. We use individual data on annual healthcare expenditures for the entire Dutch population between the years 2006 and 2013. Regional variation in healthcare expenditures is mostly driven by demand factors, with an estimated share of around 70%. The relative importance of different causes varies with the groups of regions being compared.

Economic Costs Attributable to Diabetes in Each U.S. State

OBJECTIVE

To estimate direct medical and indirect costs attributable to diabetes in each U.S. state in total and per person with diabetes.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

We used an attributable fraction approach to estimate direct medical costs using data from the 2013 State Health Expenditure Accounts, 2013 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' 2013-2014 Minimum Data Set. We used a human capital approach to estimate indirect costs measured by lost productivity from morbidity (absenteeism, presenteeism, lost household productivity, and inability to work) and premature mortality, using the 2008-2013 National Health Interview Survey, 2013 daily housework value data, 2013 mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research, and mean wages from the 2014 Bureau of Labor Statistics. Costs were adjusted to 2017 U.S. dollars.

RESULTS

The estimated median state economic cost was $5.9 billion, ranging from $694 million to $55.5 billion, in total and $18,248, ranging from $15,418 to $30,915, per person with diabetes. The corresponding estimates for direct medical costs were $2.8 billion (range $0.3-22.9) and $8,544 (range $6,591-12,953) and for indirect costs were $3.0 billion (range $0.4-32.6) and $9,672 (range $7,133-17,962). In general, the estimated state median indirect costs resulting from morbidity were larger than costs from mortality both in total and per person with diabetes.

CONCLUSIONS

Economic costs attributable to diabetes were large and varied widely across states. Our comprehensive state-specific estimates provide essential information needed by state policymakers to monitor the economic burden of the disease and to better plan and evaluate interventions for preventing type 2 diabetes and managing diabetes in their states.

The Evolution of Physician Practice Styles: Evidence from Cardiologist Migration

Physician treatment choices for observably similar patients vary dramatically across regions. This paper exploits cardiologist migration to disentangle the role of physician-specific factors such as preferences and learned behavior versus environment-level factors such as hospital capacity and productivity spillovers on physician behavior. Physicians starting in the same region and subsequently moving to dissimilar regions practice similarly before the move. After the move, physician behavior in the first year changes by 0.6-0.8 percentage points for each percentage point change in practice environment, with no further changes over time. This suggests environment factors explain between 60-80 percent of regional disparities in physician behavior.

Is personality associated with health care use by older adults?

CONTEXT

The patterns of health care utilization in the United States pose well-established challenges for public policy. Although economic and sociological research has resulted in considerable knowledge about what influences the use of health services, the psychological literature in this area is underdeveloped. Importantly, it is not known whether personality traits are associated with older adults' use of acute and long-term care services.

METHODS

Data were collected from 1,074 community-dwelling seniors participating in a Medicare demonstration. First they completed a self-report questionnaire measuring the "Big Five" personality traits: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. During the next two years, the participants maintained daily journals of their use of health care services. We used regression models based on the Andersen behavioral model of health care utilization to test for associations.

FINDINGS

Our hypothesis that higher Neuroticism would be associated with greater health care use was confirmed for three services-probability of any emergency department (ED) use, likelihood of any custodial nursing home use, and more skilled nursing facility (SNF) days for SNF users-but was disconfirmed for hospital days for those hospitalized. Higher Openness to Experience was associated with a greater likelihood of custodial home care use, and higher Agreeableness and lower Conscientiousness with a higher probability of custodial nursing home use. For users, lower Openness was associated with more ED visits and SNF days, and lower Conscientiousness with more ED visits. For many traits with significant associations, the predicted use was 16 to 30 percent greater for people high (low) versus low (high) in specific traits.

CONCLUSIONS

Personality traits are associated with Medicare beneficiaries' use of many expensive health care services, findings that have implications for health services research and policy. Accordingly, person-centered interventions, population-based translational effectiveness programs, and other personalized approaches that leverage the profound advances in personality psychology in recent decades should be considered.

Geographic variation in fee-for-service medicare beneficiaries' medical costs is largely explained by disease burden

Control for area differences in population health (casemix adjustment) is necessary to measure geographic variations in medical spending. Studies use various casemix adjustment methods, resulting in very different geographic variation estimates. We study casemix adjustment methodological issues and evaluate alternative approaches using claims from 1.6 million Medicare beneficiaries in 60 representative communities. Two key casemix adjustment methods-controlling for patient conditions obtained from diagnoses on claims and expenditures of those at the end of life-were evaluated. We failed to find evidence of bias in the former approach attributable to area differences in physician diagnostic patterns, as others have found, and found that the assumption underpinning the latter approach-that persons close to death are equally sick across areas-cannot be supported. Diagnosis-based approaches are more appropriate when current rather than prior year diagnoses are used. Population health likely explains more than 75% to 85% of cost variations across fixed sets of areas.

Cross-state disparities in US health care expenditures

This study examines the degree of convergence in health care expenditures among the US states from 1980 to 2004. Our results suggest that the US states form two clubs with specific geographical characteristics that converge to different equilibria. We also extend our analysis to investigate the cross-state disparities in nine major components of health expenditures. Our findings provide evidence for full convergence for only two components, namely 'physician and other professional services' and 'home health care'. However, for the remaining components, we can still identify various convergence clubs.

Modeling per capita state health expenditure variation: state-level characteristics matter

OBJECTIVE

In this paper, we describe the methods underlying the econometric model developed by the Office of the Actuary in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, to explain differences in per capita total personal health care spending by state, as described in Cuckler, et al. (2011). Additionally, we discuss many alternative model specifications to provide additional insights for valid interpretation of the model.

DATA SOURCE

We study per capita personal health care spending as measured by the State Health Expenditures, by State of Residence for 1991-2009, produced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Office of the Actuary. State-level demographic, health status, economic, and health economy characteristics were gathered from a variety of U.S. government sources, such as the Census Bureau, Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Centers for Disease Control, the American Hospital Association, and HealthLeaders-InterStudy.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS

State-specific factors, such as income, health care capacity, and the share of elderly residents, are important factors in explaining the level of per capita personal health care spending variation among states over time. However, the slow-moving nature of health spending per capita and close relationships among state-level factors create inefficiencies in modeling this variation, likely resulting in incorrectly estimated standard errors. In addition, we find that both pooled and fixed effects models primarily capture cross-sectional variation rather than period-specific variation.

Health spending by state of residence, 1991-2009

OBJECTIVE

Provide a detailed discussion of baseline health spending by state of residence (per capita personal health care spending, per enrollee Medicare spending, and per enrollee Medicaid spending) in 2009, over the last decade (1998-2009), as well as the differential regional and state impacts of the recent recession.

DATA SOURCE

State Health Expenditures by State of Residence for 1991-2009, produced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Office of the Actuary.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS

In 2009, the 10 states where per capita spending was highest ranged from 13 to 36 percent higher than the national average, and the 10 states where per capita spending was lowest ranged from 8 to 26 percent below the national average. States with the highest per capita spending tended to have older populations and the highest per capita incomes; states with the lowest per capita spending tended to have younger populations, lower per capita incomes, and higher rates of uninsured. Over the last decade, the New England and Mideast regions exhibited the highest per capita personal health care spending, while states in the Southwest and Rocky Mountain regions had the lowest per capita spending. Variation in per enrollee Medicaid spending, however, has consistently been greater than that of total per capita personal health care spending or per enrollee Medicare spending from 1998-2009. The Great Lakes, New England, and Far West regions experienced the largest slowdown in per person health spending growth during the recent recession, largely as a result of higher unemployment rates.

Differences in the volume of services and in prices drive big variations in Medicaid spending among US states and regions

It is well known that Medicaid spending per beneficiary varies widely across states. However, less is known about the cause of this variation, or about whether increased spending is associated with better outcomes. In this article we describe and analyze sources of interstate variation in Medicaid spending over several years. We find substantial variations both in the volume of services and in prices. Overall, per capita spending in the ten highest-spending states was $1,650 above the average national per capita spending, of which $1,186, or 72 percent, was due to the volume of services delivered. Spending in the ten lowest-spending states was $1,161 below the national average, of which $672, or 58 percent, was due to volume. In the mid-Atlantic region, increased price and volume resulted in the most expensive care among regions, whereas reduced price and volume in the South Central region resulted in the least expensive care among regions. Understanding these variations in greater detail should help improve the quality and efficiency of care-a task that will become more important as Medicaid is greatly expanded under the Affordable Care Act of 2010.

Geographic variation in health care

Measurements of health care spending and outcomes in a geographic area and comparisons of one area to another have been used to make observations about health delivery systems and guide health care policy. Medicare claims files are a ready source of data about health care utilization and have served as the basis for a large number of studies in the United States. If ecologic studies are to accurately reflect local practices, potential variables must be accounted for. In the United States, differences in disease burden and socioeconomic factors are important variables affecting health care spending and outcomes. The assertion that regional variation in Medicare spending in the last two years of life is indicative of widespread waste in the U.S. health care system became a controversial part of the health care reform debate in 2009-2010.

Geographic variation in health care and the affluence-poverty nexus

Almost 50 years ago, John F. Kennedy told Yale's graduating class that "what is needed today is a new, difficult but essential confrontation with reality, for the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie-deliberate, contrived and dishonest-but the myth-persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." Today's myth is the belief that 30% of health care spending is due to supplier-induced demand and that this amount could be saved if high-spending regions could more closely resemble low-spending regions. The reality is that, while quality and efficiency remain important goals, the major factors driving geographic differences are related to income inequality. Yet, following the road map of the Dartmouth Atlas, the Affordable Care Act includes penalties for hospitals with excess preventable readmissions (which are mainly of the poor), incentive payments for providers in counties that have the lowest Medicare expenditures (where there tends to be less poverty), incentives for physicians and hospitals that attain new "efficiency standards" (ie, costs similar to the lowest), and a call for the Institute of Medicine to recommend additional incentive strategies based on geographic variation. This scenario iscoupled with a growing bureaucracy, following the blueprint laid out by Brennan and Berwick in the 1990s, but with no tangible measures to increase physician supply. Meaningful health care reform means accepting the reality that poverty and its cultural extensions are the major cause of geographic variation in health care utilization and a major source of escalating health care spending. And it means acknowledging Bertrand Russell's admonition that a high degree of income inequality is not compatible with political democracy, nor is it compatible with health care that this nation can afford. As solutions are sought both within and outside of the health care system, misunderstandings of how and why health care varies geographically cannot be allowed to deter these efforts, and the pervasive impact of poverty cannot be ignored.

Trends in cervical and breast cancer screening practices among women in rural and urban areas of the United States

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this study was to assess rural-urban differences in mammography and Papanicolaou (Pap) smear screening.

METHODS

Data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (1994-2000, 2002, 2004) were used to examine trends in these two tests by rural-urban residence location.

RESULTS

In 2004, 70.8 percent of rural and 75.7 percent of urban respondents had received timely mammography; this difference remained significant in adjusted analyses and was greatest for women in remote rural locations. Although overall participation in mammography increased over time, a persistent rural-urban gap was identified. In contrast, in 2004, while 83.1 percent of rural and 86.1 percent of urban respondents had received a timely Pap test, the adjusted difference was not significant and Pap testing did not improve over time. Advanced age and low socioeconomic status were associated with a lack of screening.

CONCLUSIONS

Over an 11-year interval, mammography screening improved nationally, but women living in rural locations remained less likely than their urban counterparts to receive this test. However, no secular improvement in Pap testing was found, and no significant rural-urban differences were observed.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Interventions to improve breast cancer screening are needed for rural women. Such efforts should target older women and those with low socioeconomic status.

Interstate variation in the burden of fragility fractures

Demographic differences may produce interstate variation in the burden of osteoporosis. We estimated the burden of fragility fractures by race/ethnicity, age, sex, and service site across five diverse and populous states. State inpatient databases for 2000 were used to describe hospital fracture admissions, and a Markov decision model was used to estimate annual fracture incidence and cost for populations >or=50 yr of age for 2005-2025 in Arizona (AZ), California (CA), Florida (FL), Massachusetts (MA), and New York (NY). In 2000, mean hospital charges for incident fractures varied 1.7-fold across states. For hip fracture, mean charges ranged from $16,700 (MA) to $29,500 (CA), length of stay from 5.3 (AZ) to 8.9 days (NY), and discharge rate to long-term care from 43% (NY) to 71% (CA). In 2005, projected fracture incidence rates ranged from 199 (CA) to 266 (MA) per 10,000. Total cost ranged from $270 million (AZ) to $1,434 million (CA). Men accounted for 26-30% of costs. Across states, hip fractures constituted on average 77% of costs; "other" fractures (e.g., leg, arm), 10%; pelvic, 6%; vertebral, 5%; and wrist, 2%. By 2025, Hispanics are projected to represent 20% of fractures in AZ and CA and Asian/Other populations to represent 27% of fractures in NY. In conclusion, state initiatives to prevent fractures should include nonwhite populations and men, as well as white women, and should address fractures at all skeletal sites. Interstate variation in service utilization merits further evaluation to determine efficient and effective disease management strategies.

The elusive connection between health care spending and quality

Richard Cooper has shown a positive association between health care quality and "total spending" at the state level, but he does not appear to understand the limitations of this total spending measure; simply adjusting for median age causes the significant positive correlation to disappear. Cooper also finds that some third factor-we think that it is "social capital"-is the key to explaining health care quality. Cooper may believe that this result challenges three decades of research by the Dartmouth group. Instead, it supports the group's view that improved efficiency-and not more doctors and hospital beds-is central to improving quality.

States with more health care spending have better-quality health care: lessons about Medicare

Based on broad measures of health system quality and performance, states with more total health spending per capita have better-quality care. This fact contrasts with a previous finding that states with higher Medicare spending per enrollee have poorer-quality care. However, quality results from the total funds available and not from Medicare or any single payer. Moreover, Medicare payments are disproportionately high in states that have a disproportionately large social burden and low health care spending overall. These and other vagaries of Medicare spending pose critical challenges to research that depends on Medicare spending to define regional variation in health care.

A federalist approach to health reform: the worst way, except for all the others

Support for state action should be part of any strategy to expand health insurance coverage. Decades-long political deadlock in Washington has frustrated national efforts to expand coverage. Some states have already undertaken to do this; others show a determination to do so. Regulatory and legislative flexibility would trigger widespread state action. Whether one thinks that ensuring coverage requires a unified national approach or that diverse conditions require different methods in different states, the likelihood of progress will be advanced if states test out various ways to expand coverage. We describe a practical way by which the federal government can promote state action to expand health insurance coverage.

State health system performance and state health reform

State policy officials are focusing on improving health insurance coverage, but other important dimensions of performance, including quality and cost, are receiving less attention. This paper explores the implications of new data on state personal health spending, quality, and health system performance. Personal health spending is not related to mortality or quality, but Medicare spending is closely linked to preventable hospitalization. States need to link improved insurance coverage with policy strategies to improve quality and efficiency--such as requiring those covered to designate a medical home and changing payment methods to reward care coordination and more prudent stewardship of resources.

State Variation In Medicaid Spending: Hard To Justify

There is great variation among states in Medicaid spending per low-income person. This variation has many determinants, including state discretion and differences in prices and amounts of services used. Incentives in Medicaid to have low-income states spend more have generally not worked. The decentralized approach to Medicaid and the variations in spending created thereby have consequences in access and health outcomes that seem to belie a presumed national interest in equity. The current trend toward state-based solutions to health care coverage would likely exacerbate existing variations. A federal solution, though not likely, would be necessary to eliminate state variations.