Measuring Variation in Regional Medicare Service Use

December 1, 2009 The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission released the report to inform policymakers and Commission members who wanted to understand how to compare differences in the use of Medicare health care services across the United States. The researchers reviewed Medicare spending from 2004 to 2006. They developed a standardized measure of service use to measure geographic variation. A key finding was that regional variation in service use is not equivalent to regional variation in Medicare spending. Also, areas with high service use are not always the areas with high growth rates. Download the Report . . .