Rural-Urban Medicare Therapy Utilization by County 2013-2021

Tiago Jesus and ICPSR Harvested Dataverse provide county-level data on post-acute therapy utilization for Fee-For-Service Medicare beneficiaries. The dataset supports analysis of rural-urban disparities from 2013 to 2021, including pre- and post-pandemic periods. It is designed for hierarchical regressions and spatiotemporal hot spot analysis using geographic information systems.

Use Cases

• Analyze county-level therapy utilization rates across IRFs, SNFs, and HHAs to identify rural-urban disparities from 2013 to 2021.
• Perform hot spot analysis to map statistical spatial clusters of counties with persistently low therapy utilization.
• Conduct spatiotemporal emerging hot spot analysis to classify eight types of time-trends, such as intensifying low utilization.
• Build hierarchical linear models with rural residency and rural county gradient as independent variables to test interactions with year.
• Create choropleth maps intersecting county-level utilization gradients with rural areas for public health policy visualization.

Strengths

• Data covers a nine-year time range from 2013 to 2021, enabling longitudinal analysis.
• Analysis is stratified for pre-pandemic (2013-2019) and post-pandemic (2020-2021) periods.
• Utilization data is adjusted for the Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) used by CMS.
• Smallest geographic unit is county, allowing for detailed spatial analysis.

Limitations

• The dataset's row count, column names, and sample data are unavailable, limiting initial assessment of structure and volume.
• Specific file formats and data size are unknown, which may complicate integration and processing.
• The license information is not provided, creating uncertainty for reuse and redistribution.

Provenance

Source

ICPSR Harvested Dataverse

Collection Method

Aggregated from public domain data on Part A post-acute therapy minutes for Medicare Fee-For-Service Beneficiaries at county and state levels.

Time Range

2013 to 2021

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-02-23, indicating recent maintenance.

Geography

United States, at county and state levels.