Masoudi FA, et al. - Researchers examined the trends in Medicare payment rates for outpatient noninvasive cardiovascular tests. Further, they investigated the association of payment rates for hospital-based outpatient testing vs provider-based office testing with the testing location. For this study, they used the total number of Medicare claims from 1999 to 2015 (mean of 1.72 million patient-years annually). The analysis revealed an increase in the hospital-based outpatient testing to provider-based office testing payment ratio for noninvasive cardiac tests from 1.05 in 2005 to 2.32 in 2015. This increase was correlated with the subsequent proportion of hospital-based testing in Medicare fee-for-service organizations but not in a comparison group of 3 health maintenance organizations (mean of 142,230 patient-years annually). These findings suggest an association of higher hospital-based vs practice-based payments with greater proportions of outpatient noninvasive cardiac tests performed in hospital-based locations in settings where reimbursement depends on a test location.