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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…
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 useful. The purpose of this article is to help you understand these variables and we present the completeness of these data to assist researchers who are designing research studies using Medicare FFS claims and Encounter data.
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.
This article presents the data options available to researchers studying the End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) population.
Medicare-paid observation stays may be found in the Medicare Outpatient, Inpatient, or MedPAR files. This article describes how to identify observation stays that appear in each as defined by CMS billing guidance.
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.
The purpose of this article is to describe what ambulatory surgical centers are and to explain how this provider type differs from other provider types that bill Medicare.
The purpose of this knowledge base article is to 1) present an overview of International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes and versions available, 2) describe where researchers can find these codes in the Medicare claims, and 3) understand how ICD codes appear in the data.
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 used in Medicare claims files.
Researchers and data users who are working with CMS files may need to map zip code information to CMS carriers and localities. This article describes where to find current and historical versions of the file.
This article provides instructions on how to open the Medicare Physician/Supplier Procedure Summary Master (PSPS) file in Microsoft Access or SAS.