NORC Makes it Easier to Explore Data On Millions of Medicare Beneficiaries
CHICAGO, Jan. 11, 2022 — NORC at the University of Chicago unveiled updated data visualization tools—MCBS Interactives—that draw data from the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS), the leading source of information on the Medicare population. NORC created the interactive tools to make key findings about Medicare beneficiaries more accessible and help inform the critical decisions impacting one of the country’s most at-risk populations.
“The MCBS Interactives data tools were developed to visualize data in an intuitive format that helps health care researchers, policymakers, and the public more easily navigate and understand the health and well-being of Medicare beneficiaries,” said Felicia LeClere, senior fellow at NORC.
MCBS data are used to inform policy and program advancements in Medicare as well as in publications by the Congressional Budget Office, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related Statistics, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of the Actuary.
The MCBS Interactives consist of two data tools, the Survey File PUF Data Tool and the award-winning COVID-19 Data Tool. Each contains multiple interactive dashboards that present publicly available MCBS data and offers enhanced search features and navigation that allow users to easily sort and visualize a variety of demographic and health-related factors.
The range of data in the MCBS Interactives includes:
- Four years (2016-2019) of public use file (PUF) data in the recently updated Survey File PUF Data Tool, which presents trends related to beneficiaries’ insurance coverage, health status and conditions, and satisfaction with and access to care
- Three waves of COVID-19 Supplement PUF data (2020-2021) in the COVID-19 Data Tool, including trends in beneficiaries’ preventive behaviors, forgone health care, access to telemedicine, attitudes around and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines, perceptions of the severity of COVID-19, the pandemic’s impact on both their health and their daily life, etc.
See screenshot examples, below.
The COVID-19 Data Tool reveals that, in Winter 2021, most Medicare beneficiaries reported that their usual health care provider offered telephone or video appointments during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As shown in the Survey File PUF Data Tool, over a quarter of Medicare beneficiaries reported depression, in 2019, with notable differences across age and income. Users can explore the tool to learn about more demographic differences and trends in other health conditions.
Each dashboard consists of a bar chart presenting outcome variables related to a theme. For example, the dashboard on Availability of Telemedicine shows the percent of Medicare beneficiaries who reported their health care provider offered telemedicine during the pandemic. The dashboards also show a series of dot plots that dynamically update to reflect demographic and health factor breakdowns of responses. The dot plots include adjusted confidence intervals, which can be used to identify potential meaningful differences between groups. All percentage estimates were calculated using the survey weights supplied in the MCBS PUFs. Variance estimates were used to derive standard errors and confidence intervals were calculated using the replicate weights.
For more, see the MCBS Interactives’ “About the MCBS” page. To start exploring the data, visit https://mcbs-interactives.norc.org/.
“The MCBS Interactives data tools were developed to visualize data in an intuitive format that helps health care researchers, policymakers, and the public more easily navigate and understand the health and well-being of Medicare beneficiaries.”
About the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey
The MCBS is an ongoing survey of a representative national sample of the Medicare population, including beneficiaries aged 65 and over and beneficiaries aged 64 and below with certain disabling conditions. The MCBS has been continuously conducted since 1991, completing more than 1.2 million interviews since its inception. The MCBS is sponsored by the Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics of CMS and is conducted through a contract with NORC. The MCBS is designed to aid CMS in administering, monitoring, and evaluating the Medicare program. It is essential to providing vital information on beneficiaries that is not otherwise collected through operational or administrative data from the Medicare program. NORC conducts the full range of MCBS survey activities including sampling, data collection, data processing, editing, imputation, and delivery of files to CMS for final processing and dissemination.
For more information about the MCBS, including the survey’s unique features and the types of data available, see NORC’s project page.
About NORC at the University of Chicago
NORC at the University of Chicago conducts research and analysis that decision-makers trust. As a nonpartisan research organization and a pioneer in measuring and understanding the world, we have studied almost every aspect of the human experience and every major news event for more than eight decades. Today, we partner with government, corporate, and nonprofit clients around the world to provide the objectivity and expertise necessary to inform the critical decisions facing society.
Contact: For more information, please contact Eric Young at NORC at young-eric@norc.org or (703) 217-6814 (cell).