Regional variation in spending and survival for older adults with advanced cancer.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Medicare spending varies substantially across the United States. We evaluated the association between mean regional spending and survival in advanced cancer.

Methods

We identified 116 523 subjects with advanced cancer from 2002 to 2007, using Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER)-Medicare linked data. Subjects were aged 65 years and older with non-small cell lung, colon, breast, prostate, or pancreas cancer. Of these subjects, 61 083 had incident advanced-stage cancer (incident cohort) and 98 935 had death from cancer (decedent cohort); 37% of subjects were included in both cohorts. Subjects were linked to one of 80 hospital referral regions within SEER areas. We estimated mean regional spending in both cohorts. We assessed the primary outcome, surviva

SUBMITTER: Brooks GA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3691948 | biostudies-literature | 2013 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature