The text of this article describes the main patterns found in these maps.

Figure. Incremental costs of care and prevalence of diagnosed heart disease for fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries by county, 2012. A. Total incremental costs of care. Seven counties had negative incremental values. B. Prevalence of diagnosed heart disease. C. Incremental costs for inpatient services. Nineteen counties had negative incremental values. D. Incremental costs for outpatient services. Ten counties had negative incremental values. All counties with negative incremental values had fewer than 30 beneficiaries with heart disease. Beneficiaries with diagnosed heart disease were identified according to the following Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Hierarchical Conditions Category codes: congestive heart failure (80), acute myocardial infarction (81), unstable angina/acute ischemic heart disease (82), and specified heart arrhythmias (92). Incremental costs were calculated as the difference between the mean annual costs per capita for beneficiaries with heart disease and the mean annual costs per capita for beneficiaries without heart disease. For all maps, the category “Insufficient data” indicates that data from counties with fewer than 10 Medicare beneficiaries were suppressed. Data source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (5). We used ESRI’s ArcGIS 10.3 software to produce the maps.

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