MONITORING THE HEALTH STATUS AND IMPACT OF TREATMENT ON AMERICANS : THE MEDICARE BENEFICIARY HEALTH STATUS REGISTRY

collect data by mail with telephone follow up of nonrespondents to permit economical assessment of a total Registry of approximately 200,000 Medicare beneficiaries, approximately 54,000 of whom would be surveyed in any given year. (Surveys would be conducted of samples of new enrollees who would be reinterviewed every five years.) METHOD. To assess the feasibility of that approach, a field test was conducted with a