2017 MCBS Chartbook is now available!

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The Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) 2017 Chartbook is now available. The MCBS Chartbook is designed to provide the public with a collection of charts and tables presenting estimates from the MCBS.
The MCBS Chartbook is organized as follows:

• Section 1: Who is in the Medicare Population?: Demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of Medicare beneficiaries.

• Section 2: How Healthy are Medicare Beneficiaries?: Self-reported health status and health behaviors of Medicare beneficiaries.

• Section 3: What is the Medicare Population’s Access to Care and How Satisfied Are They with Their Care?: Access to and satisfaction with health care services.

• Section 4: What Health Care Services Do Medicare Beneficiaries Receive?: Health care use by Medicare beneficiaries across nine service categories, including: inpatient hospital services, outpatient hospital services, physician/supplier services, dental services, prescription drugs, Medicare hospice, Medicare home health, skilled nursing facility, and long-term nursing home care.

• Section 5: How Much Do Health Care Services for the Medicare Population Cost?: Health care expenditures and all sources of payment across service categories.

The MCBS Chartbook is updated annually to publicly disseminate current estimates for the Medicare population collected in the MCBS.  Updates on measure construction based on changes to the questionnaire are documented in each section.  Detailed measure construction information is provided in Appendix C. 

New additions to the 2017 MCBS Chartbook are measures on dementia other than Alzheimer’s disease, intellectual or developmental disability, physician wait time, and satisfaction with the availability of specialist care.  Two new exhibits are also included that further characterize the distribution of out-of-pocket spending among Medicare beneficiaries. Exhibit 5.2 presents the distribution of total out-of-pocket health care service expenditures among all Medicare beneficiaries, and Exhibit 5.9 presents total out-of-pocket health care service expenditures for selected service types among community residing beneficiaries with at least one chronic condition.

Additionally, the 2017 MCBS Chartbook introduces “special features.” These are measures that are selected for inclusion in a specific issue of the Chartbook. The 2017 MCBS Chartbook includes a special feature on patient perceptions of care. This feature includes five measures characterizing beneficiary experience with patient-centered care, including: how often a beneficiary’s usual provider listens to them, respects what they say, spends enough time with them, explains things clearly to them, and asks about things that impact their health. 

To view this publication, please visit the data tables section of the MCBS website here.
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