The Dartmouth Atlas of Vascular Health Care

<h2>Overview</h2>
<p>The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice (TDI) has created a publicly available source of data that provides researchers, payers, regulators, and innovators with metrics that quantify temporal and regional patterns of health care spending and utilization in the United States. Using CMS Medicare claims data (mostly for age >64 enrollees), Atlas researchers built cohorts (“denominators”) and numerous measures or events (“numerators”) which were then used to calculate rates either by geography or for patients assigned to specific hospitals. These rates, which are calculated consistently across time and place, provide researchers with opportunities to evaluate spatial and temporal variation/trends. </p>

<p>This entry contains Dartmouth Atlas rates for a variety of measures related to vascular health care for fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare beneficiaries, age 65 to 99. Measures include physician supply and market share by specialty, as well as rates for a wide variety of vascular surgeries and interventional procedures, including treatments for carotid artery disease, abdominal aortic aneurysm, and lower extremity arterial occlusive disease. The time period assessed varies across measures, but in general focuses on the 1995 to 1997 period. Rates are provided at the hospital referral region (HRR) level and have been adjusted for age/sex or age/sex/race as appropriate (see report for details).</p>

<p> Users downloading data should review the methods sections of the related publication for context. All reports in the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care series are available from the National Library of Medicine <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK584737/"> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK584737/ </a>
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