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Selection bias by Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes
(Archived Project)
Investigator (PI): Maciejewski, Matthew L
Performing Organization (PO): (Current): University of Washington, School of Public Health
Supporting Agency (SA): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
Initial Year: 2001
Final Year: 2003
Record Source/Award ID: CRISP/R01HS10230
Funding: Total Award Amount: $289,552
Award Type: Grant
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of Medicare HMO enrollment on the mortality and cost of care for Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes between 1994 and 1998. There are two major public policy concerns regarding individuals with chronic conditions that enroll in Medicare HMOs: (1) Does Medicare contain costs by encouraging people with chronic diseases, such as people with diabetes, to join TEFRA-risk HMOs? (2) Are the quality of care and health outcomes provided to these enrollees comparable to those in the fee-for-service sector? This study will provide insight into both of these questions using Medicare administrative data from 1992 to 1998. This proposal will extend recent work by Dowd, et al., (1998) and Maciejewski, et al. (2001) looking at biased selection of the general Medicare population into TEFRA-risk HMOs. It will use a unique dataset (the National Medicare Diabetes Cohort), which contains 2.5 million elderly Medicare beneficiaries with diagnosed diabetes mellitus in fee-for-service plans in 1994. The following specific research questions will be addressed: 1) Do healthier beneficiaries with diabetes systematically enroll in Medicare HMOs? 2) Do HMO enrollees with diabetes have different five-year survival rates than Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes who remain in the fee-for-service (FFS) sector? 3) Do unhealthier beneficiaries with diabetes systematically disenroll from Medicare HMOs? 4) Do HMO disenrollees with diabetes have different FFS costs than Medicare beneficiaries who remain in the FFS sector? The careful analysis of enrollment and disenrollment patterns of this chronically ill population, combined with the mortality and cost analyses, will provide insight into the advantages and disadvantages of enrollment in Medicare HMOs. Analyses will be conducted on a cohort of beneficiaries with diabetes in the fee-for-service sector in 1992-1993, so results are not generalizable to people with diabetes who enrolled in Medicare HMOs prior to 1994.
MeSH Terms:
  • Aged
  • Cost Control
  • Diabetes Mellitus /*economics
  • /*therapy
  • * Eligibility Determination
  • Fee-for-Service Plans
  • Health Care Costs /statistics & numerical data
  • * Health Maintenance Organizations
  • Health Status
  • Humans
  • Medicare /*statistics & numerical data
  • Quality of Health Care
  • Risk Adjustment
  • Survival Analysis
  • United States
Keywords:
  • Medicare /Medicaid
  • diabetes mellitus
  • health care cost /financing
  • human data
  • human mortality
  • human old age (65+)
  • managed care
  • preference
  • research support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.
Country: United States
State: Washington
Zip Code: 98195
UI: 20022294
Project Status: Archived