Regional Variation in Medical Care

Abstract

For more than 20 years, investigators have documented substantial variation in the use of medical and surgical procedures, hospital resources, and medications at both the regional and international levels.¹³ From this research we have learned that the type of medical care that patients receive may depend on where they live. More recently, investigators began to study another type of variation — variation in clinical outcomes such as mortality after cardiac surgery. Once again we have learned that there is substantial variation among regions, hospitals, and even individual physicians.^4,5 At first the medical community greeted the reports with indifference . . .