CMS Releases New Home Health Utilization and Payment Dataset

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a new dataset: The Home Health Agency Utilization and Payment Public Use File (Home Health Agency PUF). According to CMS, "This data set, which is part of CMS’s Medicare Provider Utilization and Payment dataset, details information on services provided to Medicare beneficiaries by home health agencies (HHAs). This new data includes information on 11,062 HHAs, over six million claims, and over $18 billion in Medicare payments for 2013.”

The data is posted on the CMS website.

The data set identifies individual HHAs using their 6-digit identification number. Services furnished by these home care agencies are grouped according to case-mix groupings, or home health resource groups (HHRGs). For each HHA and HHRG, the data set has the total number of episodes that were provided, distinct number of beneficiaries served, the HHA’s total and average charges, the total and average Medicare payments, and the total and average Medicare standardized payments.

This dataset has additional information on low-utilization payment amount (LUPA) episodes and outlier payments. The data also allows for many types of analyses to be performed, including, for example, summary analyses by HHRG and state. The postings inlcude tables and maps on the top ten HHRGs by total payment, top ten HHRGs by number of episodes, home health average payment per episode, and home health average payment per patient.

Contact: Cheryl Udell, cudell@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8871