Users should read the following information before accessing the Dashboard:
About the Medicare Hospital Inpatient Dashboard BETA
The Medicare Hospital Inpatient DashboardBETA is a beta release and offers statistical views of the Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) data as it relates to claims payment and volume as collected by CMS. Future releases may contain additional CMS Program data.
More information regarding the IPPS is available under the "Related Links Inside CMS" section below.
Information for Consumers
The information in this Dashboard is limited to Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) acute care hospital care. It does not include information on hospitalizations for beneficiaries in the managed care portion of the program--Medicare Advantage. It also does not include information on Critical Access Hospitals that operate in rural areas, or children's hospitals, Veteran's Affairs medical centers that all operate under different payment rules.
The total payments are expressed in diagnostic related groups (DRGs). In the Medicare program, patients that have similar clinical characteristics and similar costs are assigned to a DRG. The DRG will be associated with a fixed payment amount based on the average cost of patients in the group. Patients are assigned to a DRG based on diagnosis, surgical procedures, age and other information. Medicare also adjusts approximately 70 percent of each payment by area difference in hospital labor costs. Payments may also include additional amounts Medicare is required to pay hospitals for the indirect costs of training medical residents, serving a disproportionate share of low income patients or for treating very expensive cases. The amounts included for these payment adjustments are based on the best available data at the time the claim is paid; however, the final amount the hospital receives for these adjustments is reconciled at the time each hospital's Medicare Cost Report is settled.
The inpatient dollars that are presented as part of the Dashboard are useful for tracking trends in state Medicare FFS inpatient claims over time, and for understanding the relative importance of various chronic conditions to the Medicare population and to over all hospital payments. However, the total payment information must be used with caution and do not represent relative efficiencies of different states or hospitals within states. Caution should be used when comparing from state to state because of the factors below:
The number of people in a state will affect the total payment amounts. States with high numbers of beneficiaries and high numbers of beneficiaries in FFS Medicare may receive more dollars for inpatient care than other states.
The mix of more and less expensive conditions may affect both the total payments. This information has not been adjusted for the fact that the patients in some states may come in to the hospital with relatively more costly conditions. Further, if a state has health delivery systems, or hospitals that are referral centers for high cost cases, such as organ transplants, the total payments will be higher if beneficiaries from other states come into their state for that higher level of care.
The extent to which hospitals are involved in training medical residents or treating a disproportionate share of low income patients may also affect total payments. The amounts included for these payment adjustments reflect the best available data at time the claim is paid and not the final amount for these adjustments, as that final amount is determined at the time a hospital's cost report is settled.
The cost of labor in the area. Hospitals payments are also adjusted to reflect the cost of labor in a region—that is, if the hospital pays its employees more compared to the national average because the hospital is in a high-cost area (wage index). Note: The hospital's wage index is calculated using the hospital's payroll records, contracts and other wage related documentation.
Data Quality and Timeliness
The data used in the Medicare Hospital Inpatient Dashboard BETA is grouped by fiscal year, Diagnosis Related Group (DRG), State, and hospital, and is summarized by claim payment and volume. This summarized data is not risk-adjusted. The claims processing cycle is an iterative process that impacts the time for a claim to become finalized. Note that there are time lags between the time services are provided and when claims are processed. Please see the upper-right corner of the dashboard for information pertaining when the data was updated, and on the inpatient discharge reporting timeframe. The Medicare Hospital Inpatient Dashboard BETA will be updated on a monthly basis starting in 2010. The data for 2006 and 2010 does not represent a full year, thus should not be compared as such to 2007, 2008, and 2009.
Accessibility Statement
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If you use a screen reader or other assistive technology and experience difficulties accessing the information provided on this website. please email CMS Dashboard 508 Compliance. Please kindly state the nature of your accessibility problem, the Web address of the requested information, and your contact information.
The Road to Data Democracy
A video about the Medicare Hospital Inpatient Dashboard BETA
We welcome your feedback (see Submit Feedback at the bottom of this page) and suggestions for how we can improve the dashboard.
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