Medicare Claims Records
In June, 2010, NORC and IMPAQ International entered a contract with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to explore the possibility of releasing analytically useful public use files from Medicare claims records in the hopes of supporting and facilitating Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER). The NORC Data Enclave provides the ideal environment for internal analysts at different geographic locations to share work files and communicate with one another.
Medicare claims records are extremely sensitive because it contains information of individuals’ health conditions and other private personal information. Analysts involved in this project are divided into two teams: (1) de-identification team and (2) re-identification team. The de-identification team first produces treated data files through a number of perturbation processes and remove sensitive variables. Then, the re-identification team will and assess the residual disclosure risk of the de-identified public-use files.
These records include beneficiaries’ personal information (beneficiary denominator files and annual summary files), institutional files (in-patient, out-patient, skilled nurse facility, home health agencies, hospice), and non-institutional files (part D events, carrier, durable medical equipment). The ResDAC website includes a summary of each available data file.
Enclave Manager
Kenneth Kuk (kuk-kenneth@norc.org)
Contact Producer
Chris Haffer