The rise is unfortunate for healthcare cost initiatives, such as those in the health reform law, that use low-cost areas as benchmarks for providers in higher-spending areas.
For example, Medicare spending in a traditionally low-cost area around Provo, Utah, rose 8.6 percent a year from 2000-2007, nearly double the average national rate of 4.7 percent, according to the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care.
The Dartmouth Atlas also reports Medicare spending rose 7 percent or more a year in the traditionally low-cost areas of Oxford, Miss., Wausau, Wis., and Durham, N.C. Spending rose faster than the national average even in Rochester, Minn., home of Mayo Clinic, and Salt Lake City, Utah, home of Intermountain Healthcare, both of which had been considered paragons of healthcare cost-restraint.
In Provo, many physicians have built outpatient facilities for surgery, diagnostic tests and other services. The Provo area performed 17.3 percent more procedures on Medicare patients in 2008 than in 2000, outpacing the median national increase of 13.7 percent, according to a Government Accountability Office study.
In fact, while some treatments were being performed less often nationally, they were performed more frequently in Provo. This list included operations to clear leg arteries, replace heart valves and repair aortic-aneurisms, as well as hospitalizations for hypertension and asthma.
Though Provo hospitals and physicians are seeing more patients, they deny performing unnecessary procedures, but a family physician in the area suggested that “you’re probably seeing more aggressive treatment earlier on in disease stages.”
Read the Washington Post‘s report on healthcare costs.
