SBIR-STTR Award

This SBIR/STTR proposal to the National Institute on Aging (NIA) requests funding to expand the capabilities of the Medicare Research Information Center (MedRIC) recently established by Acumen, LLC with earlier support from NIA. The purpose of MedRIC is to facilitate the acquisition and linking of data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to participants of surveys and registries sponsored by NIA and other related federal agencies, and to advance the use of these data for research and public policy. By expanding the capabilities of MedRIC, Acumen hopes to establish an infrastructure capable of vastly reducing the costs and burdens that researchers must currently bear to acquire and use different sources of administrative data from CMS. To date MedRIC's activities have focused on linking functional research files derived from Medicare enrollment and claims files to surveys and registries. The aim of this new SBIR/STTR project is twofold: the first is to expand these linked files beyond Medicare to incorporate information from other CMS administrative data including the national assessment records for nursing home residents in the Minimum Data Set (MDS) and Medicaid enrollment and claims files; the second is to develop options for partnering with the U.S. Census Bureau to create research supplements from CMS administrative files matched to prominent Census Bureau surveys. In order to meet the goals for this project, Phase I will accomplish seven specific tasks. These are: formalizing arrangements with CMS for adding the MDS and parts of Medicaid enrollment and claims files to the inventory of MedRIC, developing an approach for linking information about beneficiaries across these files, conducting a pilot project to demonstrate the effectiveness of this linking approach, working with CMS and our project survey partners to establish protocols to maintain data privacy, completing plans for the creation of several "standardized" research data structures processed from the raw CMS administrative files and formulated to supply most of the needs of researchers and policy analysts, formulating plans for extensive data documentation, and preparing plans for expanding MedRIC computer infrastructure needed for this data storage and extraction. By completing these seven tasks and successfully expanding the capabilities of MedRIC, this project will vastly relieve the burden that researchers and policy analysts currently face as they attempt to fully understand patterns of health care utilization and expenditures among Medicare beneficiaries. Principal Investigator/Program Director (Last, first): MaCurdy, Thomas Acumen, LLC Project Narrative (Relevance) This project will create new comprehensive data resources linking survey data with Medicare, Medicaid and MDS files, which will allow for better informed public policy decisions regarding the Medicare and Medicaid programs as well as the overall health of their beneficiaries

This STTR proposal to the National Institute on Aging (NIA) requests funding to expand the capabilities of the Medicare Research Information Center (MedRIC) recently established by Acumen, LLC with support from NIA. The purpose of MedRIC is to facilitate the acquisition and linking of data from the Centers for Medicare &Medicaid Services (CMS) to participants of surveys and registries sponsored by NIA and other related federal agencies, and to advance the use of these data for research and public policy. By expanding MedRIC's capabilities, Acumen will vastly reduce the financial and time costs that researchers must currently bear to acquire and use CMS administrative data. To date, MedRIC's activities have already linked Medicare enrollment and claims files to NIA surveys and registries. The aim of this STTR project is to expand the scope of the project to include the national assessment records for nursing home residents in the Long-term Care Minimum Data Set (MDS) and for home health patients in the Outcomes and Assessment Instrument Set (OASIS). By successfully expanding MedRIC's capabilities, this project will vastly relieve the burden that researchers and policy analysts currently face as they investigate health care utilization, quality, and expenditure patterns for nursing home and home health patients.

Public Health Relevance:
To promote more effective public policy research on patients receiving home health and nursing home care, this project will create new data resources linking NIH survey data with Medicare patient assessment files. This integration will not only provide researchers higher quality information, but will also reduce the cost for NIH-funded researchers to access and use this linked data.

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