Attention all Medicare beneficiaries! The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is conducting it’s annual Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS). This is one of the rare cases that Medicare will be reaching out to you without solicitation. Keep an eye on your mail in July and August and look for this survey. To verify that the survey you have received is legitimate follow CMS’ guidlines below:
| If you have been contacted to participate in the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) and would like to verify your selection in this study, please contact NORC toll free at 1-877-389-3429. You can also visit our respondent website at www.mcbs.norc.org.
This survey is authorized by section 1875 (42 USC 139511) of the Social Security Act and is conducted by NORC for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The OMB Number for this survey is 0938-0568 and expires 6/30/2022. |
The Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) is a continuous, multipurpose survey of a nationally representative sample of the Medicare population, conducted by the Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics (OEDA) of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) through a contract with NORC at the University of Chicago. The central goals of the MCBS is to determine expenditures and sources of payment for all services used by Medicare beneficiaries, including co-payments, deductibles, and non-covered services; to ascertain all types of health insurance coverage and relate coverage to sources of payment; and to trace outcomes over time, such as changes in health status and spending down to Medicaid eligibility and the impacts of Medicare program changes on satisfaction with care and usual source of care.
The MCBS has been collecting data on Medicare beneficiaries for over 25 years and has conducted over 1 million interviews. Beginning with the 2015 MCBS, the files have improved user documentation, user friendly file structures, and an updated Chart Book. Note that to accommodate changes in sampling and data collection methodologies the 2014 MCBS data are not being released. For more information, please read our CMS Blog post: (http://blog.cms.gov/2016/09/29/the-medicare-current-beneficiary-survey-celebrating-our-25th-anniversary-and-a-bright-future-ahead).