Assessing the Utility of 2015 Medicare Advantage Encounter Data to Improve MCBS Estimates

• Activity Number: 579 - Sampling, Variance Estimation, and Advancements with Auxiliary Data
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, July 31, 2019 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Holly Hagerty* and Nicholas Davis and Michael Trierweiler
• Companies: NORC at the University of Chicago and NORC at the University of Chicago and NORC at the University of Chicago
• Keywords: Medicare; Medicare Advantage; Matching; Medicare Claims Data; Data Validation; Imputation

Abstract

Medicare Advantage (MA) encounter data, first available to researchers in April 2018, have information about services provided to beneficiaries enrolled in MA plans for calendar year 2015. These data have the potential to improve the accuracy of estimates derived from the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS). MCBS data on the usage and cost of Medicare covered services are matched with administrative data from traditional Fee-For-Service (FFS) claims to correct and impute survey-reported payment amounts with more accurate FFS billing information. In 2015, however, 33% of MCBS respondents were enrolled in MA plans. This portion of MCBS respondents have no health care utilization data from FFS claims. MA encounter data may be used to supplement the claims match for MCBS beneficiaries enrolled in MA plans, supplementing imputation procedures to improve estimates based on survey-reported utilization data. We assess the quality and representativeness of the MA data, examining their internal consistency as well as their consistency with survey-reported information from the MCBS in 2015, to help quantify the viability of matching survey events to MA encounter data.