OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study is to assess characteristics and health care resource utilization of patients diagnosed with breast cancer. METHODS: A large US administrative retrospective claims database was used to identify patients diagnosed with breast cancer and were taking treatment in the USA from January 2001 to December 2013 were included in the study. All patients were ≥ 18 years of age and continuously enrolled in the same health plan at least for a year. Descriptive statistics and chi-square tests were performed on the data. RESULTS: There were a total of 23,774 patients that met the study inclusion criteria. Of these, 16,745 (70.40%) were patients <65 years of age (adult) and 7,029 (29.60%) were ≥65 years of age (geriatric). There was a significant difference (p<0.01) in the mean ages of two groups (53.45±7.74 vs 73.0±5.41 years). There was no significant difference (p>0.05) in the mean length of stay between the groups (1.09±3.10 vs 1.04±1.18 days). There were more patients in adult group in the East (20.4% vs 19.4%), MidWest (29.5% vs 23.8%) and South (36.2% vs 35.7%) regions with a significant difference (p<0.05) between the groups. On average, patients were continuously enrolled in the same health plan for 65.01±36.18 vs 63.09±32.71 months and submitted 521.51±472.37 vs 555.74±484.09 claims with a significant difference (p<0.05) between the two groups. Patients on average were charged by the provider $518.48±1831.53 vs $426.12±1517.57, allowed amount by the health plan was $248.97±906.85 vs $208.44±1015.06 and the actual paid amount by the health plan was $227.68±850.93 vs $105.53±478.76 with a significant difference between the groups (p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The majority of the patients were adult and on average, these patients were charged more by the provider and actual paid amount by the health plan was more compared to geriatric patients for the treatment of breast cancer.