Medicare

This report compares medication use in long-term care facilities and community settings for Medicare beneficiaries with heart conditions. The purpose of this comparison was to evaluate the utility of a new file of institutional drug use in the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS), the premier source of health care information on the Medicare population.

Contents Introduction Overview of DSH Funding Policies What Is a Safety Net Hospital? How Should Financial Vulnerability Be Defined? Framework for Analyzing DSH Allocation Policies Hospital Data Set and

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Provides discussion and estimates of several Congressional proposals on prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries.

This report compares the medication use of Medicare beneficiaries living in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Descriptions of Medicare use include mean number of drug mentions per month of stay (scheduled and PRN drugs), and prevalence and duration of therapy by major drug classes.

Provides discussion and estimates of several Congressional proposals on prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries.

Jessica Miller, M.S., Boryana Dimitrova, M.A. and Marc Cohen, Ph.D. LifePlans, Inc. This report was prepared under contract #BPA-OS-01-0267C between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of Disability, Aging and Long-Term Care Policy (DALTCP) and LifePlans, Inc.

The purpose of this analysis is to gain a better understanding of how having a private LTC insurance policy interacts with and affects the use of Medicare financed home health, skilled nursing and inpatient services. The authors used Medicare claims data and linked it to a sample of 578 community-based disabled elders receiving benefits under their LTC insurance policies.

This report is intended to provide policymakers with critical information on prescription coverage, use and cost for both younger and older disabled Medicare beneficiaries using data from the 1995-1998 Medicare Current Beneficiary Surveys. [27 PDF pages]