HMO Coverage Count

SAS Name
BENE_HMO_CVRAGE_TOT_MONS

Months of Medicare Advantage (HMO) coverage.

Values: 0-12

Source: CMS Common Medicare Environment (CME)

Comments

This variable counts the number of months during the year that the beneficiary received their Part A and Part B benefits through a managed care plan (i.e., a Medicare Advantage [MA] plan) instead of the traditional fee-for-service (FFS) program. Any month where the HMO indicator variable (HMO_IND_XX) is anything other than a 0 (not a member of an HMO, and this value includes beneficiaries who are not Medicare enrolled for the month) or a 4 (FFS participant in a case or disease management demonstration project) is counted as an MA month.

Use caution interpreting this field since months that are not counted as HMO months for this variable include months of fee-for-service (FFS) coverage and months the beneficiary is not enrolled in Medicare. In other words — do not assume that every month during the year is either an HMO month or FFS month.