BACKGROUND Geriatric trauma care (GTC) represents an increasing proportion of injury care, but associated public health research on outcomes and expenditures is limited. The purpose of this study was to describe GTC characteristics, location, diagnoses, and expenditures. METHODS Patients at short-term nonfederal hospitals, 65 years or older, with ≥1 injury International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, were selected from 2016 to 2019 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Inpatient Standard Analytical Files. Trauma center levels were linked to Inpatient Standard Analytical Files data via American Hospital Association Hospital ID and fuzzy string matching. Demographics, care location, diagnoses, and expenditures were compared across groups. RESULTS A total of 2,688,008 hospitalizations (62% female; 90% White; 71% falls; mean Injury Severity Score, 6.5) from 3,286 hospitals were included, comprising 8.5% of all Medicare inpatient hospitalizations. Level I centers encompassed 7.2% of the institutions (n = 236) but 21.2% of hospitalizations, while nontrauma centers represented 58.5% of institutions (n = 1,923) and 37.7% of hospitalizations. Compared with nontrauma centers, patients at Level I centers had higher Elixhauser scores (9.0 vs. 8.8) and Injury Severity Score (7.4 vs. 6.0; p
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