Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Challenges of Using Medicare Data

This video is one segment in a series of videos from ResDAC’s Introduction to using Medicare Fee-for-Service (FFS) Data for Research.

This presentation provides an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the Medicare administrative data for research purposes. The claims data are derived from reimbursement or payment of bills.

Topics include:

• clinical validity of claims data derived from reimbursement or payment of bills
• validity of demographic information
• tips for approaching research including defining populations and creating analytic variables
• assessment of overall data quality
• examples of types of research studies that can and cannot be conducted using the Medicare administrative data