Designing a System to Monitor Medicare Beneficiaries' Access to Care

To determine whether beneficiaries may be experiencing difficulty accessing care, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, with the help of this contract, plans to develop an access monitoring system (AMS). The AMS will measure beneficiaries' realized access to physician services from Medicare claims and self-reported perceptions of access from 1-800-MEDICARE to produce real-time, geographically sensitive measurements of beneficiaries' access to care. These measurements will be used to detect any significant changes in access over time and across geographical areas.