What’s New on the Medicare HOS
General Updates
- Release of an HOS theme edition of the Health Care Financing Review! The Summer 2004 edition of the journal Health Care Financing Review features several peer-reviewed articles concerning various aspects of the HOS program and uses of the HOS data. Topics covered include: program history, methodology, policy issues, and applications of HOS data in the health care setting. The journal is available online at CMS' Health Care Financing Review website.
- Medicare HOS Cohort IV Performance Measurement reports were distributed to the QIOs through the QualityNet Exchange application on August 17, 2004. CMS made these reports available to participating Plans through the Health Plan Management System (HPMS) in September 2004.
- The August 2004 issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society includes an article entitled "The Health Status of Elderly Veteran Enrollees in the Veterans Health Administration." The article examines the health status of elderly veteran enrollees, and concludes that the Veterans Health Administration will require considerable resources to provide care for an aging population that exhibits substantial disease burden. The study utilized data from the 1998 Medicare HOS (Cohort I) as a reference group.
- New HOS public use data are available! Medicare HOS Cohort V Baseline, Cohort III Follow Up, and Cohort III Analytic public use files and corresponding data user's guides can be downloaded from the Medicare HOS Data Files section.
- Medicare HOS Cohort VI Baseline reports were distributed to the QIOs through the QualityNet Exchange application on July 27, 2004. CMS made these reports available to participating Plans through the HPMS in September 2004.
- New HOS Publications Section! In an effort to improve the "user friendliness" of the Medicare HOS Website, CMS has reorganized the site's content. A new Medicare HOS Publications section integrates the content formerly contained in the HOS Research and HOS Published Reports sections. The new HOS Publications section is organized by type of publication: (1) Overview, (2) Methodology, (3) Results, and (4) Applications/Interventions. Publications in each of these categories are subclassified into the following subcategories: (1) Manuals, (2) Peer-Reviewed Articles, and (3) Technical Reports. CMS has also created two new sections: Medicare HOS Overview — which incorporates the content from the former HOS Survey section, and Medicare HOS Results — which incorporates the content from the former HOS Reports section.
- CMS is currently funding an evaluation of the HOS program. This evaluation is being conducted by the Delmarva Foundation for Medical Care and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). The HOS program evaluation encompasses three components: 1) a review of the context for the HOS program; 2) an evaluation of the HOS instrument and operational protocol; and 3) an assessment of policy issues related to turning HOS data into useful information for health plans, QIOs, CMS and health care researchers. The evaluation team's first peer reviewed article, The Medicare Health Outcomes Survey Context, Overview, and Administration, is currently available for download in the HOS Publications section. The article was published in the July 12, 2004 issue of the journal Health and Quality of Life Outcomes.
- Medicare HOS Cohort III Performance Measurement beneficiary-level data are available to those Plans that continue to participate in the Medicare + Choice (M+C) program. The Cohort III Performance Measurement Electronic Data File and accompanying documentation are the second release of beneficiary-level HOS data to individual M+COs. The Cohort I and Cohort II Performance Measurement Data were released on December 13, 2002. Participating Plans can obtain their data by contacting the Medicare HOS Information and Technical Support telephone line at 1-888-880-0077 or via e-mail at hos@azqio.sdps.org. Upon contacting the HOS Information and Technical Support line, please be prepared to confirm your organization's designated recipient of these data, in addition to your plan's address, return telephone number, and CMS contract number(s). For a copy of the M+CO data user's guide, please visit the Data User's Guides section of this site.
HOS Partner Updates
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Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
- overseeing the Medicare HOS program evaluation
- overseeing Round 7 of the Medicare HOS
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Health Assessment Lab (HAL) and QualityMetric, Inc. (QM)
- completed Measuring and Improving Health Outcomes: An SF-36® Primer for the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey
- published a paper in the Summer 2004 issue of Health Care Financing Review, examining data quality and tests of SF-36® scoring assumptions among HOS respondents, including subgroups defined by age, gender, race, education, income, and other characteristics
- submitted a clinical validity paper which examines the relationship between SF-36® scores and severity of illness, focusing on how physicians can interpret SF-36® data
- working on several additional papers, including papers documenting the HOS case mix process and examining the relationship between process and outcomes measures in the HOS
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Health Outcomes Technologies Program at the Boston University School
of Public Health (HOT)
- published the article "The Health Status of Elderly Veteran Enrollees in the Veterans Administration" in the August 2004 edition of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society
- developing imputation methodologies to deal with missing values for public use of the SF-36® and the SF-12® from the HOS and the VA
- performing a system comparison study of mortality for Medicare and the VA using comprehensive risk adjustments that include the SF-36® from the HOS
- comparing Medicare HOS results to those of the Veterans Administration (VA) Health Survey
- performing psychometric comparison of the SF-36 between the HOS and VA
- examining differences of the disease burden of patients seen in the HOS systems of care compared with those veterans seen in the VA
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Health Services Advisory Group (HSAG)
- currently reviewing Round 7 (Cohort VII Baseline and Cohort V Follow Up) data
- presented an overview of research performed by HSAG on the Medicare HOS at the University of Missouri MU Sinclair School of Nursing, Improving Chronic Care Quality conference on September 11, 2004
- published the article "Chronic Conditions: Results of the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey, 1998-2000" in the Summer 2004 issue of Health Care Financing Review
- distributed HOS Cohort IV Performance Measurement reports to the QIOs through the QualityNet Exchange Application on August 17, 2004
- distributed HOS Cohort VI Baseline reports to the QIOs through the QualityNet Exchange Application on July 27, 2004
- submitted final HOS Cohort V Baseline, Cohort III Follow Up, and Cohort III Analytic Public Use Data Files (PUFs) with corresponding data user's guides to CMS on July 7, 2004
- currently distributing HOS Cohort III Performance Measurement data to those participating Plans who request their data
- conducting a feasibility study on the possible integration of the HOS and CAHPS® surveys
- performing a number of research tasks utilizing the HOS data
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National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA)
- conducting analysis of survey protocol and vendor effects on response rates
- conducting analysis of the Management of Urinary Incontinence and Healthy Days measures
- convening a Technical Expert Panel meeting scheduled for November 15, 2004
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Research Triangle Institute International, Division of
Health Economics Research (RTI)
- working on several HOS related research articles
- conducting a series of nonresponse bias analyses
For additional information on the HOS Partners, please visit the HOS Partners section of this website.
Continue on to the HOS Overview section.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services