MCBS Public Use File

MCBS Public Use Files (PUFs)

The Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS), sponsored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics (OEDA) through a contract with NORC at the University of Chicago is a continuous, in-person, longitudinal survey of a representative national sample of the Medicare population. The central goals of the MCBS are to determine expenditures and sources of payment for all services used by Medicare beneficiaries, including co-payments, deductibles, and non-covered services; to ascertain all types of health insurance coverage and relate coverage to sources of payment; and to trace outcomes over time, such as changes in health status and spending down to Medicaid eligibility and the impacts of Medicare program changes on satisfaction with care and usual source of care.  The MCBS provides valuable information on health outcomes and social determinants of health not available in the administrative program data. 

MCBS Public Use Files (PUFs) are not intended to replace the more detailed MCBS Limited Data Set (LDS) Files, rather they provide a publicly available alternative for those researchers interested in the health, health care use, access to and satisfaction with Medicare of beneficiaries, while providing the very highest degree of protection to the Medicare beneficiaries’ protected health information, meeting all necessary de-identification of the data and mitigating disclosure risk.

If you have questions or feedback regarding use of the MCBS PUFs, please email us at MCBS@cms.hhs.gov.

Note:  Please read the CMS Data Disclaimer - User Agreement below, which contains important information regarding the use of the PUF data.

CMS Data Disclaimer – User Agreement  (PDF)