Rethinking rurality: using hospital referral regions to investigate rural-urban health outcomes.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Rural residents in the United States face disproportionately poorer health outcomes compared to urban residents. This study aims to establish a continuous rural-urban measure for the 306 hospital referral regions (HRRs) in the U.S. and to investigate the relationship between the proportion of rural population served in each HRR and health outcomes, healthcare spending and utilization, and access to and quality of primary care.

Methods

Cross-sectional analysis using data from The Dartmouth Atlas and the U.S. Census. The sample is limited to fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries aged 65-99 years and living during 2015. The primary outcomes were measured at the HRR-level: mortality rates, Medicare reimbursements, percent Medicare enrollees who have at least one visi

SUBMITTER: Skinner L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9635085 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature