Hello!
As discussed in Friday’s post, I found there to be some interest into where the highest and lowest values lied in the United States. Although the highest values seemed to be centered in cities, there was a small cluster of the cheapest 100 services around the southeast (especially LA, AL, MS, and FL). As such, I did some statistical analysis to see the disparities between costs for the lowest price of service, against the national averages, and the highest costs. The table is shown here:
| Lowest Values | Highest Values | Overall Values | |
| Min | $4,139.52 | $19,159.40 | $4,139.52 |
| 1st Quartile | $4,817.21 | $19,984.60 | $6,979.85 |
| Median | $4,967.09 | $21,301.30 | $9,722.56 |
| 3rd Quartile | $5,079.50 | $23,895.30 | $11,688.60 |
| Max | $5,162.02 | $48,632.30 | $48,632.30 |
| Range | $1,022.50 | $29,472.90 | $44,492.78 |
| Standard Deviation | 197.332 | 4102.96 | 4022.79 |
I think one of the most interesting takeaways is how widely dispersed the maximums cost are. There is a nearly $30,000 difference, showing that there must be some high outliers. Going into next week, I definitely want to spend some time investigating those specific hospitals, to see exactly what may be causing those absurd costs. I also excluded the highest value of $48,632.30 in my Heat Map graph, but if I find that the range significantly lowers if I cut off the top 10 highest costs, I may adjust the graph even more.
Although the Highest costs had a strange disparity, the lowest costs are fairly universal around the price of $4k – $5k. Even if I include the lowest 500 costs, all values are still $6,200 and under. In fact, if you look at the median of all data, services are still under $10,000. This shows me that for an Intracranial Hemorrhage, there should be no reason that a service costs more than $15,000 (if it were to follow the same dispersion as the lower 50%). The fact that only the top 100 costs have a range of over triple the overall median, shows that these hospitals are drastically over-charging.
Although I will most definitely focus on the reasoning for the high costs, I do want to reflect on the region the lowest costs seem to be centered around. According to a study done by WalletHub, Louisiana and Alabama rank in the worst 10 Healthcare systems, with Mississippi ranking as the worst in the continental United States. I feel that this may have an impact on the cost of services, because if they don’t have access to the best supplies, facilities, or surgeons, they don’t need to pay or charge for those services. What I found to be interesting about this though, was that I believed population of states would have an effect on the costs, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Florida, in particular, stood out to me as it is the third most populated state, but has a significant number of the lowest 100 service costs, in addition to having quite a few of the top 500 service costs, although those seem to be centered around major cities (Orlando, Miami, etc.)
This week’s aim is to begin looking at the specific hospitals that charge over $20,000 for their service, and try to find rationality for their charges. From there, I hope to begin on writing the final report, in addition to coming up with solutions to make Medicare more understandable and universal.