US Counties With the Highest Hospital Stays per 1,000 Medicare Enrollees

3,137 US counties ranked by hospital stays per 1,000 Medicare enrollees, from highest to lowest. First are Oglala Lakota County, SD (537), North Slope Borough, AK (425) and Red River Parish, LA (408). The middle one of the 3,137 has 213.

What this measures

Hospital stays, counted from admission to discharge, in a year for every 1,000 people in traditional Medicare. It includes all kinds of stays, not only those that better care might have prevented. It leaves out people in private Medicare Advantage plans. Source: CMS Medicare Geographic Variation Public Use File.

For most measures, a national ranking mostly sorts places by income and by how urban they are. Each county’s own page compares it with the 50 counties most like it instead, which is often the fairer view.

The 100 highest counties

Every state, highest first

Each state’s own published figure, not an average of its counties.

More on hospital stays per 1,000 Medicare enrollees

• US Counties With the Lowest Hospital Stays per 1,000 Medicare Enrollees
• Hospital stays per 1,000 Medicare enrollees by US county: map by year and what it goes with

A ranking describes places, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All US rankings.