Knowledgebase

Beneficiary death information is available in several of the Medicare enrollment files. Limited death information is also found in other files, such as the MedPAR. This article describes the variables found in each.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) seeks to ensure the protection of CMS data disclosed to external organizations for research purposes. To accomplish this, CMS has developed the Data Privacy Safeguard Program (DPSP). The DPSP reflects the CMS priorities to both improve data stewardship and to protect the privacy and security of CMS research identifiable files (RIF) that are made available for conducting important research studies.

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS') Price (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.

To describe the CMS policy that prohibits non-US based researchers from accessing identifiable CMS data (RIF and LDS) and provide examples of common scenarios.

Availability of provider variables Provider variable completeness Provider variable definitions

The purpose of this article is to describe how to use the Medicare managed care enrollment information found in the Medicare Beneficiary Summary File (MBSF) Research Identifiable File (RIF) or Denominator in the Limited Data Set (LDS). Medicare managed care is sometimes also called Medicare Advantage, Medicare Part C or Medicare + Choice.

This article presents the data options available to researchers studying the End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) population. 

Doctoral students may request CMS data for their dissertation project. Students should consider several factors when deciding which type of data to use. This article presents considerations and resources for students interested to request CMS Research identifiable data.

The CMS National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) provides basic information about all organization and individual providers with a National Provider Identifier (NPI). This article provides a brief overview of how to access the NPPES and the information that it contains.

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.

The Medicare Hospital Service Area File is one of the few CMS non-identifiable files that can be opened in Microsoft Excel. The article describes the steps to import the file into Excel.

A number of CMS Limited Data Set (LDS) files are released first as a Proposed Rule file and then as a Final Rule file. This article provides a brief description of the differences between those two files.