Physician Responses to Medicare Payment Cuts, 1988-1991 Hospital Data

Observations for 21 surgical procedure groups across eight medical specialties, collected from up to 187 hospitals over up to 15 quarters. This data collection by Thomas Rice of UCLA investigates how decreases in Medicare payment rates affected physician service volume, billing, and procedure selection for Medicare and privately-insured patients. The data also includes hospital characteristics and county-level information on healthcare resources and demographics.

Use Cases

• Modeling the relationship between payment rates and service volume based on the described observations of 21 procedure groups.
• Analyzing shifts in diagnostic or therapeutic procedure selection for different patient insurance types as mentioned in the study.
• Investigating the proportion of physician income derived from Medicare and procedure profitability in relation to service volume.
• Correlating hospital and county-level characteristics, such as nurse wages and HMO enrollment, with physician billing and volume patterns.

Strengths

• Focuses on 21 high-volume and expensive surgical procedure groups, as stated in the description.
• Includes multi-source data: procedure volumes, hospital characteristics, and county-level demographic/healthcare metrics.
• Provides longitudinal coverage with observations spanning up to 15 quarters between 1988 and 1991.

Limitations

• Row count and file format are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data excludes radiology, pathology, and lab procedures, and procedures with erratic volume changes, limiting scope.

Provenance

Source

Thomas Rice, University of California, Los Angeles

Collection Method

Study investigating effects of Medicare payment rate decreases on physician behavior, likely compiled from hospital and insurance records.

Time Range

1988-1991

Geography

United States (inferred from Medicare context and data source)