Thoracic Surgery — Medicare Part B billing by state

Each group carries one specialty label — the specialty most common among its clinicians in CMS's Doctors and Clinicians register — so every figure on this page counts groups, not individual clinicians. An organization's entire Medicare billing is credited to that one label, so a specialty's totals reflect how organizations are labeled, not the specialty of each service; large multi-specialty organizations — where no single specialty is a majority of the clinicians — account for much of the volume shown under many specialties. Totals include only volume that can be credited to a single group; clinicians registered with more than one group are left out of group totals and shown as “—” elsewhere on Nevvi. Clinicians not registered with any group, and groups without a specialty label, are also not included. A group is counted in every state its clinicians bill Medicare from, so state figures overlap and never sum to the national figure.

All figures are Medicare fee-for-service Part B only; Medicare Advantage claims are not included. Cross-state comparisons use standardized payments, which remove regional differences in what Medicare pays; services without a standardized amount — mainly Part B drugs — are not in that column, and the Medicare payments column shows what Medicare actually paid. Beneficiary counts are beneficiary-episodes: one person treated in more than one setting or state is counted in each.