Updated research request forms and data security approval requirement effective 4/24/23
Knowledgebase
Introductory
Articles
CMS offers files from aggregate data to individual person level data. This article describes the differences between the aggregate, public use files, the limited data sets,…
This article describes the Federal Regulations that govern the release of CMS data for research.
The purpose of this article is to identify 1) common strengths of Medicare and Medicaid administrative data and 2) broad limitations for researchers to consider when…
Popular
Articles
This article provides guidance on how to identify hospital emergency room claims from the Medicare files.
Providers that bill Medicare use codes for patient diagnoses and codes for care, equipment, and medications provided. This articles provides resources to identify the codes…
To describe the CMS cell size suppression policy and provide examples of common scenarios and possible options.
Featured Article
There are many different provider variables in the Medicare Fee-for-Service (FFS) Claims and Encounter data. Researchers are often interested in the performing NPI and/or the facility CCN or organizational NPI, but other variables are sometimes…
The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS') payment standardization process, as well as provide methodological documentation that explains how the standardized claim payment amounts for Medicare Part A, Part B, and Part D claims are calculated.
This article provides a link and overview of the document on finder and crosswalk files written by the CMS data distributor, HealthAPT.
The purpose of this article is to identify 1) common strengths of Medicare and Medicaid administrative data and 2) broad limitations for researchers to consider when requesting and using the data.
Detailed information about Medicare Part D drug plan formularies is available in two CMS data files. Important differences in the files are outlined below, including whether or not the files can be linked to other data sources.
Part D Event (PDE) files for data years prior to 2010 may include the values of “XX” or “NA” for any of the four Utilization Management variables. This article describes when and why each value was used.
With the exception of PY 2014, CMS research files do not include beneficiary risk adjustment scores. However, CMS does provide the programming code and instructions to calculate the three risk adjustments that CMS uses as the basis for managed care payment.
This article provides resources for obtaining statistics and reports related to the Medicare and Medicaid programs and their beneficiaries. The following Medicare/Medicaid statistical and summary data resources address some of the most common requests for this type of information. These are by no means exhaustive.
Provide the steps to identify the drug name from the RxNorm database for the NDCs in the BSA PDE PUF.