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Travel Distance Between U.S. Hospitals, 1993

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SPONSOR: Prospective Payment Assessment Commission (ProPAC)
VOLPE INTERNAL: Service and Operations Assessment Division, DTS-49

The Volpe Center was commissioned ProPAC, now part of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), to provide GIS support for ProPAC's establishment of a wage index for the labor pools from which hospitals draw their employees by using a measure of hospital proximity. ProPac is responsible for determining the amount of financial reimbursement paid to hospitals and other medical facilities that participate in the Medicare/Medicaid program. The Volpe Center developed a GIS-based database of hospital locations for the entire U.S. and display and data manipulations capabilities of the database. A major analysis of the distance relationships between each hospital and its nearest neighbor hospitals was performed in order to provide ProPac with a methodology of evaluating Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements as a function of labor pools common to hospitals within a given vicinity. Analyses were also performed on both air-mile and road-mile shortest path distances from hospitals to all other hospitals within a selected radius.

Publication: Measurement of Air and Road Distances Between U.S. Hospitals, Final Report, Volpe Center, Cambridge MA, January 1993.