This brief from the ETSU/NORC Rural Health Research Center examines differences in Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) risk scores between rural and urban Medicare Fee-for-Service beneficiaries across four common chronic conditions: hypertension, diabetes, depression, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. HCC coding is a risk assessment tool developed by CMS to estimate future health care costs.
