CMS has new data on hospital utilization
Tools rolled out at Health Datapalooza
Hospitals and health systems might be interested in several of the initiatives announced by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) at its Health Datapalooza event this spring, which brought more than 2,000 entrepreneurs, health policy advocates, and health industry leaders together. Among the new data released and initiatives launched are:
• The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the first of what it’s calling an annual update to the Medicare hospital charge data, "or information comparing the average amount a hospital bills for services that may be provided in connection with a similar inpatient stay or outpatient visit," according to an HHS news release. The information is available at https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Medicare-Provider-Charge-Data/.
The new data provide the first update of the hospital inpatient and outpatient data that CMS released last spring. According to the news release, they include "information comparing the average charges for services that may be provided in connection with the 100 most common Medicare inpatient stays at more than 3,000 hospitals in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Hospitals determine what they will charge for items and services provided to patients, and these charges’ are the amount the hospital generally bills for those items or services."
The release adds, "With two years of data now available, researchers can begin to look at trends in hospital charges. For example, average charges for medical back problems increased by 9%, from $23,000 to $25,000, but the total number of discharges decreased by nearly 7,000 from 2011 to 2012."
Other data tools
CMS also released an array of other data products and tools designed to "increase transparency about Medicare payments," according to the release. These include inpatient and outpatient hospital charge data for 2012, and new interactive dashboards for the CMS Chronic Conditions Data Warehouse (http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Chronic-Conditions/index.html) and geographic variation data (http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Medicare-Geographic-Variation/GV_Dashboard.html).
The chronic conditions warehouse includes new information on chronic conditions among Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries, including the following, according to the release:
• geographic data summarized to national, state, county, and hospital referral regions levels for the years 2008-2012;
• data for examining disparities among specific Medicare populations, such as beneficiaries with disabilities, dual-eligible beneficiaries, and race/ethnic groups;
• data on prevalence, utilization of select Medicare services, and Medicare spending;
• interactive dashboards that provide customizable information about Medicare beneficiaries with chronic conditions at state, county, and hospital referral regions levels for 2012;
• chartbooks and maps.
"These public data resources support the HHS Initiative on Multiple Chronic Conditions by providing researchers and policymakers a better understanding of the burden of chronic conditions among beneficiaries and the implications for our health care system," according to the release.
"The Geographic Variation Dashboards present Medicare fee-for-service per-capita spending at the state and county levels in interactive formats. CMS calculated the spending figures in these dashboards using standardized dollars that remove the effects of the geographic adjustments that Medicare makes for many of its payment rates. The dashboards include total standardized per capita spending, as well as standardized per capita spending by type of service. Users can select the indicator and year they want to display. Users can also compare data for a given state or county to the national average. All of the information presented in the dashboards is also available for download from the Geographic Variation Public Use File," according to the HHS release.
There is also a new tool designed to help estimate how many Medicare beneficiaries have certain health conditions or fit certain demographic profiles (https://www.ccwdata.org/web/guest/pricing/estimate-study-size). According to the release, it "can assist a variety of stakeholders interested in specific figures on Medicare enrollment. Researchers can also use this tool to estimate the size of their proposed research cohort and the cost of requesting CMS data to support their study."
