Analysis of Medicare Spending, Dual Eligibles, and COVID-19 Data

This project will provide timely data using Medicare claims data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' Virtual Research Data Center (VRDC), which is the most up-to-date source of Medicare claims data. The project also will use data from the American Hospital Association’s annual survey of hospitals. The areas for analyses, with quarterly updates, include Medicare beneficiaries with COVID-19 diagnoses, Medicare fee-for-service spending (total and COVID-19-positive), Part D and Part B drug spending, and telehealth use. The analyses will include splits by race, age, dual eligibility with Medicaid, chronic conditions, high need high cost, geography, and more when applicable. The three areas for additional analyses include examining the distribution of dually eligible beneficiaries across providers and the characteristics of these providers, assessing Medicare spending across hospital systems, and examining Medicare Part D spending across pharmacy chains. CareJourney also will link the Commonwealth Fund’s international program's physician survey to claims data using national provider identifiers (NPIs) provided by the surveyed physicians. All analyses will be done in consultation with the Fund, including input from the Fund on variable designs, splits, and outputs.