HCCI: Healthcare spending, service use vary widely across the country

In the latest data released from the Health Care Cost Institute’s (HCCI) Healthy Marketplace Index, an analysis of more than 1.8 billion claims shows wide variation when it comes to medical spending and frequency of services depending on the region of the country. The report looks at services between the years 2012 and 2016 and cost per transaction. The results—across 43 states and 112 local areas—reveal that spending varied greatly across metro areas. Results also differed when segmented by inpatient, outpatient and physician services, and when comparing for service utilization. "To us, the most interesting finding was just the extent of variation—not only in how much the same services cost or were used in areas across the country, but also in how price and use compared within metros," Bill Johnson, Ph.D., a senior researcher with HCCI, told FierceHealthcare. "There were plenty of examples where you could find two metro areas where prices were essentially the same. For example Oxnard, California, and New Haven, Connecticut—New Haven used almost 50% more services."