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 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 current HOS administration
(2011 Round 14),
Cohort 14 is surveyed and
Cohort 12 is 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, provides a table of the HOS survey administration timeline
for the data collection, report dissemination and cohorts of data used in the CMS Star
Ratings, 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 information on the HOS measures utilized in the Part C CMS Star Ratings.
- Data Dissemination provides information on the
HOS reporting process and HOS contact information for Quality Improvement Organization
(QIO) and MAO data users, and provides access to sample reports containing national HOS results.
- HOS-Modified Overview reviews the Medicare HOS-Modified
(HOS-M) program, which administers a modified HOS survey to members of Program of
All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) Organizations.
- Real World Uses provides information and downloadable
files on how HOS findings are used to support Medicare operations and translate research
into practice, and provides self-paced training webinars about the HOS.
- 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.
- FAQs provides answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the HOS program.
- Contact Us provides pertinent contact information for
the HOS program.