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Low

High Regional Income

For Policy Makers

Healthcare spending in the US is increasing dramatically as a percentage of our country’s GDP. But does the spending improve the healthcare we receive? To explore the answer, we looked at how healthcare spending impacts healthcare quality.

  • which areas
    are medically
    under-served?

    The distribution of hospitals, the amounts of money the hospitals spent in the patients, the quality of Medicare all vary wildly across regions in the United States.

    We call attention to regions with limited access to hospitals, especially high-quality hospitals.

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    Which hospitals need efficiency intervention?

    Based on the moneitary input and the medicare quality output data, we present a predictive model to inform policy makers and investors the likely quality output of a new hospital.

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    Money input
    and
    Spending efficiency

    It's noteworthy that higher medicare spending per claim might be related to less efficiency of the spending.

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    Medicare quality is a multi-dimensional measure. Interestingly, higher medicare spending has positive correlation with certain quality measures but not others.

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    Money input
    and
    Medicare outcome

    Correlation between spending and outcome, colored by efficiency categories.

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    A more detailed description of US hospital status quo is avaiable. We encourage users to furthur explore the condition of their concerned states and regions.

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  • Poverty Data
    Medicare Data

    • Our approach

      We looked at how healthcare spending impacts healthcare quality, using the ten measures used by the Delmarva Foundation’s Award for Excellence. The above visualization shows how spending affects care and how this differs from region to region


      Data Source
      Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Service. Feb 2014.

    • Yes,
      but not much.

      As shown in both our visualzation and statistics, hospitals that spend more do tend to have a greater probability of meeting a high standard of healthcare quality, according to the criteria for the Delmarva Awarda Foundation’s Award for Excellence.

    • Objective

      and

      subjective

      healthcare quality


      We measure healthcare quality by both objective (e.g. Influenza immunization rates) and subjective measures(e.g.Patients' perception of cleanliness).


      Data Source:
      Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Service

      • Do poorer regions
        pay more?

      The X-axis shows regional income
      level from low to high. The yellow areas
      show the regions with more high quality hospitals
      than lower ones.

    • Region to Region

      We also compared the poverty level among area without a hospital, with 1 hospital and with multiple hospitals.

    • MONEY
      Expectation

      Perception of Quality

    Medicare Spending

    Variables

    Medicare Hospital Spending by Claim
    Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

    Regional
    Poverty

    Variables

    Individual Income Tax Statistics
    US IRS (Internal Revenue Service)Tax Center
    Mar 2014

    Healthcare Quality

    Objective Measures

    Percentage of heart failure patients given discharge instructions
    Percentage of heart failure patients whose left ventricular systolic function was evaluated
    Percentage of non-immunized patients who received an influenza immunization
    Percentage of cases where prophylactic antibiotic was initiated within one hour prior to surgical incision
    Selection of prophylactic antibiotics for surgical patients
    Prophylactic antibiotics discontinued 24 hours after surgery time
    Surgery Patients on a Beta Blocker Prior to Arrival Who Received a Beta Blocker During the Perioperative Period
    Surgery Patients Who Received Appropriate Venous Thromboembolism Prophylaxis Within 24 Hours Prior to Surgery to 24 Hours After Surgery
    Postoperative Urinary Catheter Removal
    Initial antibiotic selection for community acquired pneumonia (CAP) in immunocompetent patient

    Subjective Measures

    Patient satisfaction and recommendation ratings
    Respondents = 300 | Jun 2014.
    via Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) Patient Survey conducted by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services