TABLE A5.

Definitions of health care spending categories

Category	Definition
Inpatient and emergency care
Acute care hospital spending	Acute hospitalizations are defined as any hospitalization that occurred in general hospitals for any condition. This includes physician fees, inpatient laboratory, imaging, and drugs given. All admissions were counted even if the patients were discharged the same day. It includes services provided in the emergency department.
Acute care hospital spending for index hospitalization	Same as above but for index hospitalization only.
Post–acute rehabilitative care
Facility‐based post–acute rehabilitative care	All spending related to inpatient rehabilitative care or skilled nursing facilities or other spending related to rehabilitative care that requires a facility‐based stay
Facility‐based post–acute rehabilitative care for index hospitalization	Same as above but for rehabilitation following the index hospitalization.
Primary care
Total primary care spending	Sum of spending categories below.
Primary care services provided by a MD	Costs for any service provided by general practitioners, general internists, or equivalent in a primary care/ambulatory setting.
Non‐MD primary care services	Primary care services provided by nurses, nurse practitioners, or other non‐MD equivalent (physician assistants, nurse practitioner). (Exclude phone calls)
Outpatient/ambulatory specialty care
Total outpatient specialty care	Sum of spending categories below.
Outpatient MD specialty services	All visits to specialists who are MDs. These include MDs like cardiologists, gastroenterologists, surgeons, and so forth. Do not include radiologists or pathologists in this category.
Outpatient diagnostic MD specialist visits	All visits to radiologists or pathologists if it is an actual patient encounter.
Drugs
Outpatient drugs	Any costs attributable to drugs prescribed to the patient in the outpatient setting are included in this section. Drugs administered as part of a hospital stay are not included in this category.
	Of note, drugs administered in the inpatient setting are included as part of inpatient/hospital costs above.

Abbreviation: MD, medical doctor.