Using Medicare Claim Data to Identify Deceased Beneficiaries Aged 80 to 89

In lieu of a report, we are issuing this memorandum to inform the Social Security Administration (SSA) of our review of beneficiaries who have not used Medicare Part A or B for longer than 3 years. We are not making a formal recommendation for corrective action; the Agency may act in response to this information as it deems appropriate.

Our objective was to determine whether SSA could identify deceased beneficiaries aged 80 to 89 using its Medicare claims data. We will not perform additional work on this audit because our analysis of Medicare claims data identified a minimal number of deceased individuals aged 80 to 89, and as such, we are focusing our resources on other audits.