Dartmouth researchers have found Medicare spending differs across the country, with some areas seeing much faster growth than others, The New York Times reported February 26.

The analysis was to be published February 27 in The New England Journal of Medicine. It found doctors who often order tests and admit patients to hospitals drive up costs.

“The incentives are there for growth,” Elliott S. Fisher, MD, the director of the Center of Health Policy Research at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and one of the work’s authors, told The Times.

“As long as Medicare pays for volume and intensity, that’s what you’re going to get,” Mark B. McClellan, MD, a health policy specialist at the Brookings Institution who oversaw the Medicare program during part of the previous administration, told The Times.

Read the full story in The New York Times.