Busiest Georgia Hospitals For Medicare Patients
CMS publishes a ton of data for public use. They made available a “Hospital Service Area File” which gives the following data: number of discharges, total days of care, and total charges summarized by hospital provider number and the ZIP code of the Medicare beneficiary. This data set is a summary of calendar year Medicare inpatient hospital fee-for-service claims data.
I pulled down the 2018 file and wanted to dig around in the data to determine the following for this post:
- Top 10 Georgia hospitals by cases
- Top 10 Georgia hospitals by days of care
- Top 10 Georgia hospitals by total charges
Let’s get started.
Cases
The number of cases is also known as discharges. This will tell us how many Medicare Inpatients the hospitals took care of during 2018.
There are 145 Acute care hospitals in Georgia and the average number of Medicare cases is 3,033. Let’s see which hospitals are in the top 10.
| # | Hospital | City | Cases |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NORTHEAST GEORGIA MEDICAL CENTER, INC | GAINESVILLE | 19,757 |
| 2 | WELLSTAR KENNESTONE HOSPITAL | MARIETTA | 18,199 |
| 3 | EMORY UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 14,536 |
| 4 | UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL | AUGUSTA | 14,146 |
| 5 | PIEDMONT HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 13,535 |
| 6 | MEDICAL CENTER, NAVICENT HEALTH (THE) | MACON | 13,297 |
| 7 | GWINNETT MEDICAL CENTER | LAWRENCEVILLE | 11,692 |
| 8 | PIEDMONT ATHENS REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER | ATHENS | 11,426 |
| 9 | MEMORIAL HEALTH UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER | SAVANNAH | 10,165 |
| 10 | EMORY UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL MIDTOWN | ATLANTA | 9,644 |
Total Days of Care
Days of care tells us how long the patient was in the hospital. First, we’ll look at the top 10 hospitals by total days of care.
| # | Hospital | City | Days |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NORTHEAST GEORGIA MEDICAL CENTER, INC | GAINESVILLE | 104,016 |
| 2 | WELLSTAR KENNESTONE HOSPITAL | MARIETTA | 100,294 |
| 3 | EMORY UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 97,239 |
| 4 | MEDICAL CENTER, NAVICENT HEALTH (THE) | MACON | 84,837 |
| 5 | PIEDMONT HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 77,699 |
| 6 | UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL | AUGUSTA | 75,461 |
| 7 | GWINNETT MEDICAL CENTER | LAWRENCEVILLE | 68,026 |
| 8 | GRADY MEMORIAL HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 65,271 |
| 9 | EMORY UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL MIDTOWN | ATLANTA | 59,993 |
| 10 | MEMORIAL HEALTH UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER | SAVANNAH | 54,468 |
For the above 10 hospitals, let’s look at what the average length-of-stay (ALOS) is.
| # | Hospital | City | ALOS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NORTHEAST GEORGIA MEDICAL CENTER, INC | GAINESVILLE | 5.26 |
| 2 | WELLSTAR KENNESTONE HOSPITAL | MARIETTA | 5.51 |
| 3 | EMORY UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 6.69 |
| 4 | MEDICAL CENTER, NAVICENT HEALTH (THE) | MACON | 6.38 |
| 5 | PIEDMONT HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 5.74 |
| 6 | UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL | AUGUSTA | 5.33 |
| 7 | GWINNETT MEDICAL CENTER | LAWRENCEVILLE | 5.82 |
| 8 | GRADY MEMORIAL HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 7.20 |
| 9 | EMORY UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL MIDTOWN | ATLANTA | 6.22 |
| 10 | MEMORIAL HEALTH UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER | SAVANNAH | 5.36 |
The average ALOS is right at 6 for these hospitals. Grady Memorial Hospital has a higher ALOS, which is probably due to level of care they provide at that hospital. They are a large trauma hospital in downtown Atlanta.
Total Charges
Total charges are based on what was billed versus what Medicare paid. Charge structures differ between hospitals, so it’s hard to derive a lot of information from these numbers, but we’ll take a look any way.
| # | Hospital | City | Charges |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WELLSTAR KENNESTONE HOSPITAL | MARIETTA | 1,321,721,971 |
| 2 | NORTHEAST GEORGIA MEDICAL CENTER, INC | GAINESVILLE | 1,302,394,136 |
| 3 | PIEDMONT HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 1,202,486,424 |
| 4 | EMORY UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 972,992,232 |
| 5 | DOCTORS HOSPITAL | AUGUSTA | 880,219,119 |
| 6 | MEDICAL CENTER, NAVICENT HEALTH (THE) | MACON | 831,503,778 |
| 7 | GRADY MEMORIAL HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 808,214,798 |
| 8 | REDMOND REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER | ROME | 630,369,474 |
| 9 | NORTHSIDE HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 581,080,673 |
| 10 | MEMORIAL HEALTH UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER | SAVANNAH | 580,652,740 |
Let’s take one more look at charges, but calculating the average charges per patient.
| # | Hospital | City | ALOS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WELLSTAR KENNESTONE HOSPITAL | MARIETTA | 72,626 |
| 2 | NORTHEAST GEORGIA MEDICAL CENTER, INC | GAINESVILLE | 65,921 |
| 3 | PIEDMONT HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 88,843 |
| 4 | EMORY UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 66,937 |
| 5 | DOCTORS HOSPITAL | AUGUSTA | 134,221 |
| 6 | MEDICAL CENTER, NAVICENT HEALTH (THE) | MACON | 62,533 |
| 7 | GRADY MEMORIAL HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 89,168 |
| 8 | REDMOND REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER | ROME | 76,187 |
| 9 | NORTHSIDE HOSPITAL | ATLANTA | 84,154 |
| 10 | MEMORIAL HEALTH UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER | SAVANNAH | 57,123 |
The above list is in order of total charges. See the average charge amount for Doctors Hospital in Augusta? They have a burn unit. Maybe that’s why the charges are higher, or maybe they just have a higher charge structure. Who knows?
Musing Revelations
If I had to guess before looking at this data, I wouldn’t have guessed Northeast Georgia Medical Center for having the most Medicare patients in Georgia. I figured Grady or Emory would take the top spot.
Medicare patients are generally a sicker population just because that’s what getting old does to you. Your body wears out and you can’t bounce back like you used to. On average, I see about a 4 day ALOS and I’m not surprised that this population runs a little higher. Also, not surprised that they have high charges. The longer you spend in the hospital, the more the charges soar.
In the next post, we’ll look at where the patients are coming from. As in, what zip code is the sickest Medicare population for 2018. See you later.