Mental health care use after leaving Medicare Advantage for traditional Medicare.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

To evaluate changes in mental health visits and specialties among beneficiaries with at least 1 mental health visit before and after switching from Medicare Advantage (MA) to traditional Medicare (TM).

Study design

This study examines Medicare beneficiaries with mental health diagnoses who switched from MA to TM in 2018, analyzing their mental health utilization 12 months before and after the switch using MA encounter and TM claims data.

Methods

A longitudinal design was used, comparing mental health visits before and after the switch. We applied Wilcoxon signed rank tests to compare the total number of visits and McNemar tests for specific provider specialties used. Statistical significance was defined as a P value less than .05.

Results

Of the 32,7

SUBMITTER: Liu A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12829909 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature