676 – Innovations in the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey: Improving Data Quality and Dissemination to Advance Scientific Knowledge and Inform Health Policy
Improvements in the MCBS Sample Design
Kirk Wolter
NORC at the University of Chicago
Whitney Murphy
NORC at the University of Chicago
Nicholas Davis
NORC at the University of Chicago
The Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey, sponsored by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in partnership with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, is a continuous, in-person, longitudinal survey of a representative national sample of the Medicare population. The survey was designed to aid in administering, monitoring, and evaluating the Medicare program. Historically, the survey samples have been obtained using a multistage sample design in which beneficiaries were selected within ZIP-code areas, which in turn were selected within 107 primary sampling units. This paper reports on a redesign of the second stage of sampling implemented in 2014. Instead of using ZIP-code areas as second stage units, we selected a set of Census tracts, thus reducing the burden of maintaining the second stage units and allowing for easier merging of survey data with aggregate-level environmental data. The paper also reports on an expansion of the sampling frame being implemented in 2015 to include persons who are age 64 and will become eligible for Medicare in the coming year, thus permitting the release of data products up to a year earlier than in the past.