Writing on the rural news site Daily Yonder, Bill Bishop and Julie Ardery take a look at the Dartmouth Atlas, using only cost data from the two-thirds of hospital service areas that have mostly rural or exurban populations. They found that only 27 percent of the rural HSAs had Medicare reimbursement costs above the national average, but that variations in spending between rural areas were just as pronounced as those among their urban counterparts.
Bonners Ferry, Idaho, a town of about 2,500 near the Canadian border that’s home to the lowest Medicare costs of any American majority-rural area. Photo by prentz via Flickr.
The accompanying map is particularly nifty, not just because of what it shows about rural health differences, but also about the coverage and costs of rural hospitals.
To learn more about the Dartmouth Atlas and how to use it to determine how medical resources are distributed and used in the United States, read AHCJ’s Covering Hospitals, a slim guide that focuses on how journalists can best use Dartmouth Atlas and Hospital Compare.
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- Covering Health: Dartmouth Atlas: Powerful when used right
- Covering Health: Why health costs in McAllen, Texas, resonate
