Best Practices in Using Medicare Advantage Encounter Data for Healthcare Research

2015 Medicare Advantage encounter data is not an analytic-ready data set for researchers to evaluate utilization or quality of care among MA enrollees. This report highlights the importance of data cleaning and preparation before the data is used and offers areas of strength and weakness by MA contract and provider type, helping to guide researchers who have access to the 2015 and later MA encounter data and wish to evaluate care delivered by MA plans.