Medicare Health Outcomes Survey
Welcome to the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (HOS) website.
The Medicare HOS is the first outcomes measure used in Medicare managed care and
the largest survey effort ever undertaken by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Services (CMS). The goal of the Medicare HOS program is to gather valid and reliable
health status data in Medicare managed care for use in quality improvement activities,
plan accountability, public reporting, and improving health. All managed care plans
with Medicare Advantage (MA) contracts must participate.
A random sample of Medicare beneficiaries, who were continuously enrolled for a
six month period, is drawn from each participating Medicare Advantage Organization
(MAO) and surveyed every spring (i.e., a survey is administered to a different baseline
cohort, or group, each year). Two years later, these same respondents are surveyed
again (i.e., follow up measurement).
Cohort 1 was surveyed in 1998 and
was resurveyed in 2000.
Cohort 2 was surveyed in 1999 and was resurveyed
in 2001, and so on. During the most recent HOS administration (2008),
Cohort 11
was surveyed and
Cohort 9 was resurveyed using HOS 2.0. For data collection years 1998-2006,
the MAO sample size was one thousand. Effective 2007, the MAO sample size is increased
to twelve hundred.
This website is designed to provide current information on the progress of the HOS
program, as well as house the full spectrum of Medicare HOS related data and reports.
The following pages are included:
- What's
New provides updates on the latest HOS program developments.
-
MA Conference Materials provides educational materials, including slides and
audio presentations, from the April 2008 Medicare Advantage Quality Measurement
& Performance Assessment Training Conference.
- Program Overview
reviews the history of the Medicare HOS program and provides a glossary of terms
related to the HOS.
-
Program Timeline provides a chronology of survey activities for each annual
round of HOS data collection from sampling through data dissemination.
- Survey
Instrument provides downloadable versions of the questionnaire from each year
of the HOS and reviews the key components of the instrument.
- Survey
Results discusses HOS performance measurement results and provides access to
sample reports.
-
Data Dissemination provides information on the HOS reporting process and HOS
contact information for Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) and MAO data users.
-
Real World Uses provides information and downloadable files on how HOS findings
are used to support Medicare operations and translate research into practice.
- Publications
provides an overview of Medicare HOS research and a comprehensive list of HOS publications,
and links to HOS-related technical reports.
- Research
Data Files contains information on accessing Medicare HOS data, and includes
downloadable Medicare HOS public use data files (PUFs) available for research purposes.
-
Data User's Guides contains downloadable HOS Data User's Guides which detail
the QIO, MAO, and PUF data specifications, instructions, and information on how
to use these data.
- Program Partners
provides information on the organizations involved in the HOS program, including
links to their respective websites.
- Contact Us provides pertinent
contact information for the HOS program.