Average Beneficiary CMS Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) Risk Scores for Rural and Urban Providers
Risk adjustment mechanisms predict whether a given patient, or group of patients, is likely to be more or less costly to treat than the average population and provides a way to adjust payment accordingly. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) risk adjustment model is a hierarchical condition category (HCC) score. Use of the HCC model is expanding, and there is concern over whether it functions as intended. If CMS-HCC risk scores do not accurately reflect patient health status because of factors such as coding practices or capacity, then payments may not be associated with the true cost of treatment.
Existing evidence suggests that there may be cause for concern. Rural populations experience worse health outcomes than their urban counterparts. By contrast, rural Medicare beneficiaries have lower average CMS-HCC risk scores than urban beneficiaries, suggesting that rural beneficiaries are healthier and less costly. Additionally, preliminary analyses suggest that smaller physician practices, which are disproportionately located in rural areas, have the lowest average CMS-HCC risk scores. On the other hand, rural Medicare beneficiaries are younger than urban beneficiaries, and it may be the case that patients with more complexity systematically seek care in urban areas.
This brief investigates potential differences in urban and rural CMS-HCC risk scores at the provider’s patient panel level. We used the 2015 Medicare Physician and Other Supplier Public Use File to compare patient panel CMS-HCC risk scores between urban and rural providers across provider specialties, census divisions, and Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) participation requirements.
Contact Information:
Kristin Reiter, PhD
North Carolina Rural Health Research and Policy Analysis Center
Phone: 919.843.8619
reiter@email.unc.edu
Additional Resources of Interest:
- More information about the North Carolina Rural Health Research and Policy Analysis Center
- More information from the Rural Health Information Hub’s topic guides: Medicare and Rural Health, Rural Health Policy
For Immediate Release on: July 11, 2018
This e-mail and research alert are a service of the Rural Health Research Gateway. The Rural Health Research Gateway does not assume any legal liability for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of the information provided in this message. Web site links included in the message are for your convenience. The Rural Health Research Gateway is not responsible for the availability or content of these web sites. For additional services and information, see the Rural Health Research Gateway web site at https://www.ruralhealthresearch.org/