A new office at the CMS will now be responsible for the agency's data functions and will also oversee the release of information and products as part of a data initiative that the agency announced Tuesday.
The announcement came during Tuesday's portion of the two-day “Datapalooza,” hosted by HHS, the Institute of Medicine, and other members of the Health Data Consortium in Washington.
The CMS has established the Office of Information Products and Data Analytics to manage the agency's portfolio of data and information at a time when the agency processes more than 1.3 billion claims a year, receives data submissions under the meaningful use requirements of the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Records Incentive Programs, and prepares to receive more data as part of the health insurance exchanges that will start in 2014.
“CMS must leverage this data to inform internal decisions and has a public responsibility to provide appropriate access to data (while ensuring beneficiary privacy) to external stakeholders in order to facilitate healthcare innovation,” the agency noted in a fact sheet about its new data initiative.
As part of the effort, the Office of Information Products and Data Analytics will take over current CMS data functions, such as: managing the Chronic Condition Warehouse; administering and producing the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey; and overseeing the Research Data Assistance Center.
It will also be responsible for releasing new information and products, including the Medicare Geographic Variation Trend Data, a data set that includes information about demographics, spending, utilization and quality care from 2007 through 2010. And it will oversee the Medicare Enrollment Dashboard, which will provide statistics on Medicare enrollment patterns at both the national and state levels.
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