Identifying neuropsychiatric disorders in the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey: the benefits of combining health survey and claims data

The study examines how using both health survey data and Medicare claims data improves the identification of people with neuropsychiatric disorders, compared to using either data source alone. People with cognitive issues might not accurately report their conditions, and administrative data might miss some cases. Combining these sources gives a more complete picture. The findings show that using both survey and claims data identifies a larger proportion of individuals with neuropsychiatric disorders than either source alone, especially for conditions causing cognitive impairment.

• 1
  Combining health survey and claims data increased the estimated proportion of the sample with neuropsychiatric disorders to 50.0 %, compared to 38.9 % with health survey only and 33.2 % with claims only.
• 2
  The largest relative increases in diagnosis proportion were seen for the facility sample, particularly for intellectual/developmental disorders and stroke.
• 3
  Only 44.1 % of potential neuropsychiatric disorder cases were identified by both claims and health survey, highlighting the importance of using both sources.