DataView: Border-Crossing Adjustment and Personal Health Care Spending by State

This article presents the results of a pioneering effort by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) to measure interstate border crossing for services used by Medicare and non-Medicare beneficiaries. A major focus is to provide estimates of per capita expenditures by State for individual services. Such estimates are not possible without adjustment for interstate border-crossing flows. This is HCFA's first attempt to furnish a unified per capita personal health care expenditures data base comprising all services and covering total population. The study also analyzes interstate differences in expenditure flows by computing rates of inflow and outflow of expenditures, and highlights Medicare/non-Medicare flow differences.