title: An analysis of the agreement between financial data between the Medicare Cost Report and the audited hospital financial statement.
abstract: Very few studies have thoroughly examined the discrepancies between the financial information in the Medicare Cost Report (MCR) and that in the audited hospital financial statement (FS). Furthermore, this type of study has never been conducted for rural hospitals. In this policy brief, we present the findings from our study, which used statistical methods to examine the agreement between the MCR and the FS of a series of financial measures in rural hospitals. The results are expected to inform policy makers of the limitation inherent in using MCR data as the single source of data to examine the financial performance of rural hospitals.
authors.forename: Li-Wu
authors.initials: LW
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Julie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Stoner
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Makhanu
authors.forename: Kathy
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Minikus
authors.forename: Keith J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Mueller
mesh_terms: D000066:Accounting / Q000592:standards*; D003625:Data Collection; D004469:Economics, Hospital / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005375:Financial Audit / Q000592:standards*; D006780:Hospitals, Rural; D006801:Humans; D006278:Medicare / Q000191:economics*; D014481:United States