Health Outcomes Survey (HOS)

The Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (HOS) limited data sets (LDS) are comprised of the entire national sample for a given annual survey or 2-year cohort (including both respondents and non-respondents), and contain all of the HOS survey items. Plan contract numbers have been blinded and certain plan level fields removed to prevent identification of individual health plans. The files also contain protected beneficiary-level health information such as date of birth; however, specific person identifiers (i.e. name and health insurance claim number) are not included in the LDS files.

Two types of HOS LDS files are available: baseline and analytic. HOS baseline files contain data collected during an annual baseline survey administration. Analytic files, available by cohort, contain the merged baseline data collected during an annual survey administration and the follow-up data collected during resurvey two years later. All HOS LDS files are provided as SAS data sets.

The HOS LDS File Specifications (see the link in Related Links below) detail the characteristics of the merged baseline and follow-up LDS for each available cohort of data. The documentation provides the field name/description, field type, field length, additional information (including valid values where applicable), and indication of field inclusion or exclusion for each cohort file.

To request HOS LDS files, please follow the instructions on the DUA - Limited Data Sets page.

General information about the Medicare HOS Program is available from the CMS HOS web page (see the link in Related Links below). Additional information about the HOS is available on the Medicare Health Outcomes website.