Medicare Hospital Outpatient Department Services: A Descriptive Analysis

摘要

The Health Care Financing Administration is under Congressional mandate to develop and implement a Medicare prospective payment system for facility costs of hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs). The report is a descriptive analysis of all services (surgery, radiology, laboratory, and medicine) provided to Medicare beneficiaries in the HOPD in 1987. The purpose is to provide information relevant to the design and implementation of payment reform in the HOPD setting including: patterns of beneficiary visits; procedures most often performed; specific procedures and types of services accounting for most spending; the relationship between, and the variation around, average charges and costs; and differences in average charges, costs, outliers, and casemix by hospital type.