Medicare Geographic Variation - by National, State & County

The Medicare Geographic Variation by National, State & County dataset provides information on the geographic differences in the use and quality of health care services for the Original Medicare population. This dataset contains demographic, spending, use, and quality indicators at the state level (including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands) and the county level.

Spending is standardized to remove geographic differences in payment rates for individual services as a source of variation. In general, total standardized per capita costs are less than actual per capita costs because the extra payments Medicare made to hospitals were removed, such as payments for medical education (both direct and indirect) and payments to hospitals that serve a disproportionate share of low-income patients. Standardization does not adjust for differences in beneficiaries’ health status.