Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) MEDPAR Limited Data Set (LDS)

MedPAR consolidates Inpatient Hospital or Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) claims data from the National Claims History (NCH) files into stay level records.   The accumulation of claims submitted for the period commencing on a beneficiary's date of admission to an inpatient hospital or SNF and ending on the beneficiary’s date of discharge from that hospital or SNF represents one stay.  In the case of a SNF stay where the beneficiary has not yet been discharged and remains a patient, the claims submitted between the admission date to the SNF through the time of the MedPAR file creation, represent one stay. A stay record may represent one or more final action claims.  

NOTE:  Any given MedPAR file represents a static snapshot of a specific stay at the time the data was sourced from NCH.  As such, any given stay record on a specific update of MedPAR DOES NOT NECESSARILY represent the final coding and/or payment information for that stay because if subsequent adjustments to the claims that comprise the stay occur after MedPAR is run, they will not be reflected on the file.

This file is identical to the Expanded Modified MEDPAR - Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF)

This file is stripped of most data elements that will permit identification of beneficiaries. The SNF is identified by the six position Medicare billing number. The file contains records for 100% of Medicare beneficiaries who use SNF services. The file is available to persons qualifying under the terms of the Routine Use Act as outlined in the December 24, 1984, "Federal Register" and amended by the July 2, 1985, Notice.

The Final Rule is published in the "Federal Register" usually by the first week of September. This file is derived from the MEDPAR file with a cutoff of six months after the end of the fiscal year (March update file).

Media: CD ROM
File Cost: $650.00 per year
Data Format: Comma separated variable block with SAS® read-in program
Size: 1,063Mb - NOTE: File may be too large to open on a desktop.
Available: FY 2002 through FY 2023

Note: Regarding the 1999 File - The file contains corrupted data in data element "Admission of Date of Death Interval" positions 528-532. Corruption occurred during the Y2K conversion of legacy data files. At present, there are no plans to correct the data.

To browse the record layout and copylibs, see the Downloads section below.

Please follow the instructions on the DUA - Limited Data Sets page.