Change in HOS Effectiveness of Care Quality Among Medicare Advantage Enrollees Associated With the COVID-19 Pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, aspects of outpatient healthcare quality declined, but few studies examined whether changes differentially affected patient groups. Given heightened interest in preventive care during the pandemic, we describe changes from 2017-2019 to 2020-2022 in screening/prevention-focused measures and examined changes by patient characteristics. Data were from the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (HOS) which is administered annually to a sample of Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollees with 2-year follow-up of baseline respondents. HOS-derived quality measures assess enrollees' receipt of recommended preventive care counseling from their provider. As these measures focus on effective provider-patient communication, we hypothesized that the magnitude of change would be largest for communication-associated enrollee characteristics: age and language spoken at home.