Dive Brief:
- CMS released an interactive tool for mapping geographic disparities in chronic diseases among Medicare beneficiaries.
- Available online, the tool can be used to pinpoint disparities in health outcomes, medical utilization and spending by race, ethnicity, and geographic location.
- The Mapping Medicare Disparities tool’s main features include a dynamic interface, the ability to sort by numerous population subsets and built-in benchmarking.
Dive Insight:
With the interface, users can see data on the prevalence of 18 chronic conditions, end-stage renal disease, and disability. It also has data on Medicare spending, hospital. and emergency department utilization, preventable hospitalizations, readmissions, and death rates.
Users can sort by residence, sex, age, dual Medicare/Medicaid eligibility, race and ethnicity using either by aggregate state or county-specific data. The benchmarking feature allows uses to investigate disparities within and across racial and ethnic groups.
The agency developed the tool — part of the CMS Equity Plan for Improving Quality in Medicare — in collaboration with KPMG and NORC at the University of Chicago.
A Quick Start Guide and MMD Tool FAQ are available here.