The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Office of Minority Health (CMS OMH) updated the Mapping Medicare Disparities (MMD) Tool to include 2018 Medicare Advantage encounter data and new visual enhancements. Previously, the MMD Tool used only Medicare Fee-for-Service data but will now include Medicare Advantage encounter data as well. This data may be informative to communities working to become age- and dementia friendly and collaborate with local healthcare providers.

The MMD Tool is an interactive map that provides a Population View to look at data on a national, state, or local level, and the Hospital View which looks at hospital quality and costs, designed to identify areas of disparities between Medicare enrollees.  This includes racial and ethnic groups in health outcomes, utilization, and spending.  As well as hospital quality and cost of care at the county level. The tool is available in English and Spanish.

Data additions include:

• Added 2018 Medicare Advantage encounter data to provide data on conditions and services. Encounter data refers to information reported from a Medicare Advantage Organization (MAO) or other submitter to CMS about medical items or services a beneficiary received while enrolled in one of the MAO’s plans.
• Added 2022 preliminary and final 2021 Medicare FFS claims to the Population View.
• Added additional Market Saturation measure (i.e., Users per Provider) in the Population View.
• Added Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) and Drug Use Disorder (DUD) conditions for the Medicare FFS population in the Population View.
• Added 2020 state & county-level Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) data to the Population View.
• Added a census-tract-level Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) view to the MMD tool. This view includes 7 new SDOH measures using 2020 data.
• Added Sickle Cell Disease as a condition for the Medicare FFS population in the Population View, starting with the 2022 preliminary Medicare FFS claims. Added the Behavioral Health Domain to the Medicare FFS Population View. These conditions were previously found under the Chronic and potentially disabling conditions domain.
• Added the 65+ age category for 2021 Medicare FFS and 2018 MA to the Population View

Updated views and features include:

• Addition of a drop-down menu for users to select Medicare FFS or Medicare Advantage population.
• Updated the Profile Views with 2020 American Community Survey data for more data at national, state, and county levels.

Updated the Hospital View with Hospital Compare data to provide more information to help identify any disparities.

More info is available via a new video from CMS and online at go.cms.gov/mmd.