A New Series of Medicare Expenditure Measures by Hospital Referral Region : 2003 - 2008

In this report we present newly developed measures of Medicare expenditures at the hospital referral region level for 2003 to 2008. These estimates reflect a larger sample of Medicare beneficiaries than our past estimates: 20% of the fee-for-service population instead of a 5% sample as in the previous data series. These rates rely on the actual Medicare claims files rather than the Continuous Medicare History Sample, the original 5% sample used for Atlas reimbursement data, which has been discontinued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).