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Abstract:
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The Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) is a continuous, multipurpose survey of a nationally representative sample of the Medicare population, conducted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) through a contract with NORC at the University of Chicago. The survey collects extensive information on health care use, costs, access to health care, and satisfaction with care. CMS releases annual files for the MCBS, including the Access to Care (ATC) and Cost and Use (CAU) files. ATC, released first, contains survey reported data among "always-enrolled" beneficiaries. CAU, released later, contains a combination of survey reported data matched to Medicare claims and administrative data among "ever-enrolled" beneficiaries. In our presentation we will discuss and review the design of the MCBS and demonstrate how to combine the ATC and CAU files. In doing so, we make 1) ATC more generalizable to the "ever-enrolled" population, 2) allow for more robust analysis of MCBS data in the ATC file that are not in the CAU file (i.e. preventative services, satisfaction with care, and access to care) and 3) explore potential limitations/implications of combining ATC and CAU.
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