Preprocessing Medpar Data

Abstract

Medicare data provide information that hospitals submit for billing purposes, Medpar, or Medicare Provider Analysis and Review. It is publicly available (for a fee) at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/Limited- DataSets/02_MEDPARLDSHospitalNational.asp. There are multiple forms in Medicare data and we provide the SAS code on how to “unpack” the different forms for use in analysis. We are using the 2005 version of the data. It can be provided for one or several providers. We use Medpar data from a Wound Care Center to investigate the treatment of diabetic foot ulcers. We want to determine how such patients are treated, especially those with infections. The Medicare population is at highest risk for such problems. Using a higher risk population means that there will be more patients with what are, essentially, rare occurrences of a disease. As stated in the Chapter 3, MEPS data is insufficient to examine rare occurrences, so we need to use additional data for such problems.