SEER-Medicare Health Outcomes Survey: Support for Researchers

The two self-paced training webinars in this section provide an overview of the kinds of information that the SEER-MHOS database provides, as well as direction for how to obtain the data for research. Each is less than 30 minutes long.

The webinar entitled "Introduction to Using Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) and Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (MHOS) Linked Data" is a basic tutorial for those that are new to the SEER-MHOS linked data. The session provides an overview of the development of the linked data initiative, a description of the components of the linkage, research ideas, as well as information about how to obtain the data set.

The webinar entitled "Overview of the HOS Survey 2.0 and Its Use in the SEER-MHOS Linked Data Sets" is a more advanced webinar that addresses differences in the research design of the HOS using two different health status tools measuring the health related quality of life of Medicare beneficiaries. The presentation is directed towards researchers who wish to use the SEER-MHOS data that includes the HOS Survey results gathered between 1998-2005 and data collected beginning in 2006). The webinar describes the differences between the outcomes tools [The Medical Outcomes Study Short Form-36 (SF-36) and the Veterans RAND 12-Item Health Survey (VR-12)] as well as how the earlier surveys using the SF-36 have been rescored to provide comparability to the VR-12.

For information regarding the Health Outcomes Survey and assessing the Health-related Quality of Life of Medicare beneficiaries using the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form-36 (SF-36®) and the Veterans Rand 12 Item Health Survey (VR-12), please visit Medicare HOS Publications on the HOS Web site.