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Characteristics of Low-volume Communities
Currently, various categories of rural health care providers receive special payment from Medicare, principally because they are considered to be essential providers at financial risk due to their service areas. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission is considering the possibility of creating a single category for health care providers based on low volume, and eliminating the various categories currently in use. An alternative to designating low volume providers is designating low volume communities in which we would expect all health care providers to experience the difficulties of supporting a low volume of services. This project will use Geographic Information Systems to develop criteria for designating low volume communities. The selection of communities using these criteria will be compared with communities selected using criteria based on providers, as developed by other Analytic Centers. The final product of this work will be a formula that can be used in legislation designating low-volume essential providers.
Publications
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Health Services at Risk in "Vulnerable" Rural Places
Author(s): Michael D. Shambaugh-Miller, Julie Stoner, Louis Pol, Keith Mueller
Report Number: Rural Policy Brief Vol. 7, Number 5 (PB2002-5)
Date: 10 / 2002
Describes, applies, and discusses implications of a method to identify places in rural America that are at risk of (vulnerable to) being without adequate health care services because 1) they lack a sufficient number of people to support a practice/provider, 2) they lack a sufficient number of people who are able to pay the full cost of care, 3) the population size and composition do not warrant the level of services currently available.
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