The Role of Patient Factors, Cancer Characteristics, and Treatment Patterns in the Cost of Care for Medicare Beneficiaries with Breast Cancer.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To characterize Medicare expenditures on initial breast cancer care and examine variation in expenditures across hospital referral regions (HRRs).

Data source

We identified 29,110 women with localized breast cancer diagnosed in 2005-2008 and matched controls from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results-Medicare linked database.

Study design

Using hierarchical generalized linear models, we estimated per patient Medicare expenditure on initial breast cancer care across HRRs and assessed the contribution of patient, cancer, and treatment factors to regional variation via incremental models.

Principal findings

Mean Medicare expenditure for initial breast cancer care was $19,255 per patient. The average expenditures varied from $15,053 in the lowes

SUBMITTER: Xu X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4722219 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature