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Effects of Distance to Care and Rural or Urban Residence on Receipt of Radiation Therapy Among North Carolina Medicare Enrollees With Breast Cancer

BACKGROUND Distance to oncology service providers and rurality may affect receipt of guideline-recommended radiation therapy (RT), but the extent to which these factors affect the care of Medicare-insured patients is unknown. METHODS Using cancer registry data linked to Medicare claims from the Integrated Cancer Information and Surveillance System (ICISS), we identified all women aged 65 years or older who were diagnosed with stage I, II, or III breast cancer from 2003 through 2005, who had Medicare claims through 2006, and who were clinically eligible for RT. We geocoded the address of each RT service provider’s practice location and calculated the travel distance from each patient’s residential address to the nearest RT provider. We used ZIP codes to classify each patient’s residence as rural or urban according to rural-urban commuting area codes. We used generalized estimating equations models with county-level clustering and interaction terms between distance categories and rural-urban status to estimate the effect of distance to care and rural-urban status on receipt of RT. RESULTS In urban areas, increasing distance to the nearest RT provider was associated with a lower likelihood of receiving RT (odds ratio [OR] = 0.54; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.30-0.97) for those living more than 20 miles from the nearest RT provider compared with those living less than 10 miles away. In rural areas, those living within 10-20 miles of the nearest RT provider were more likely to receive RT than those living less than 10 miles away (OR = 1.73; 95% CI, 1.08-2.76). LIMITATIONS Results may not be generalizable to areas outside North Carolina or to non-Medicare populations. CONCLUSIONS Coordinated outreach programs targeted differently to rural and urban patients may be necessary to improve the quality of oncology care.