Federal officials said the tool, known as the Virtual Research Data Center, will make federal health data more affordable while giving researchers access to much timelier information. That, in turn, they say, will bolster much-needed research that could improve quality of care and reduce costs.
“We're acutely aware of the huge potential that CMS data holds for creating a more efficient, higher-quality healthcare system, and researchers play a large part in that transformation,” CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner said in a news release.
Dr. Ashish Jha, a Harvard University associate professor of health policy and management, said the VRDC is a step in the right direction. But Jha, who regularly uses Medicare data to conduct research on topics such as preventable hospital readmissions and mortality, said the costs may still be too high to make the tool attractive for many research groups.
The current price tag for large samples of CMS data can run well above $100,000, while the VRDC charges an annual fee of $40,000 per individual user, or “seat.” That flat fee covers training and 500 gigabytes of space per researcher. Registered users can use the tool to access a variety of federal data files, including Medicare Parts A, B and D claims and the Medicare Provider Analysis and Review file. The CMS said the $40,000 price is based on the cost of making the data available.
But Jha said costs could far exceed the $40,000 per-user tab, particularly on projects that involve a large number of researchers. The VRDC charges $15,000 for each additional user added to an existing project and $12,000 for each additional project a paid user undertakes during the course of a year. “For projects with a lot of people, the financial model stops working,” Jha said.
Niall Brennan, acting director of the CMS Offices of Enterprise Management, acknowledged the tool might not be well-suited for every research team. “Large-scale research projects that need a significant amount of data across a number of years are going to have considerably lower costs using the VRDC,” Brennan said in an e-mail. But if those research projects are conducted by large teams, he added, “the additional costs for more 'seats' in the VRDC may reduce the cost differential between virtual access and physical data provision.”
Conversely, researchers conducting smaller-scale research projects who don't have the data systems and tools needed to protect and analyze CMS data may choose to use the VRDC, he said. The Research Assistance Data Center, the CMS contractor that provides free assistance to researchers interested in using federal health data, can give cost estimates for data and help determine which option is best, Brennan said.
