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CMS opens up Medicare data to outside researchers
Larry Portzline//June 4, 2015//
Listen to this articleAccording to a news release, the move is part of the Obama administration’s commitment to allow the use of data and information to drive the health care delivery system’s transformation.
Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt said the research “will ultimately improve care and provide better tools that should benefit health care consumers through a greater understanding of what the data says works best in health care.”
“Data is the essential ingredient to building a better, smarter, healthier system,” Slavitt said. “We expect a stream of new tools for beneficiaries and care providers that improve care and personalize decision-making.”
Researchers will access data via the CMS Virtual Research Data Center, which provides access to granular CMS program data, including Medicare fee-for-service claims data. Researchers working in the data center will have direct access to approved privacy-protected data files and will be able to conduct their analysis within a secure CMS environment. Patient identities will be concealed, but the identities of care providers will not be, CMS said.
“Historically, CMS has prohibited researchers from accessing detailed CMS data if they intended to use it to develop products or tools to sell,” said Niall Brennan, CMS chief data officer and director of the Office of Enterprise and Data Analytics. “However, as the delivery system transforms from rewarding volume to value, data will play a key role. We hope that this new policy will lead to additional innovation and insights from the CMS data.”
CMS also announced that researchers will be allowed to request data quarterly rather than the annually as in the past. Technological advancements, such as the VRDC, have facilitated access to more current data without higher data costs, CMS said. The change in data access will allow researchers to conduct more rapid analysis of the delivery system, the agency noted.
CMS will begin accepting innovator research requests in September 2015.
