Identifying the Transgender Population in the Medicare Program
December 2016 | Kimberly Proctor, Samuel C. Haffer, Erin Ewald, Carla Hodge, and Cara V. James
“Using this methodology, we identified 4098 persons as transgender Medicare beneficiaries. Table 1 demonstrates these findings along with results from the validation logic. This classification method was highly accurate, with 89.26%, or 3658 persons, having enough information in their claims history to validate their classification as transgender. ”
Four thousand ninety-eight transgender beneficiaries were identifed, of which ~90% had confirmatory diagnoses,billing codes,or evidence of a hormone prescription. In general, the racial,ethnic,and geographic distribution of the Medicare transgender population tends to reflect the broader Medicare population. However, age, original entitlement status, and disease burden of the transgender population appear substantially different.