ICAR Research Data Repository for Knowledge Management

The MBSF mortality denominator can be used to study mortality rates of the elder population in the US. Access to CMS data is restricted. Processed datasets cannot be shared. Contact the authors if you've purchased CMS data through RESDAC and would like to use our data processing pipelines to clean CMS raw data and generate the MBSF mortality denominator.

In the United States, when individuals reach the age of 65, they become eligible for the Medicare federal health insurance program. Medicare also covers individuals under 65 if they have certain disabilities or End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is the federal agency responsible for managing the Medicare and Medicaid data. CMS makes predefined datasets available for purchase to researchers after they enter a Data usage agreement through Research Data Assistance Center (ResDAC).

A beneficiary-level data from CMS/ResDAC is known as the Master Beneficiary Summary File (MBSF). The raw MBSF data contains basic demographic information of individuals, an indicator of death, and some details on their medicare enrollment.

We refer to the mortality denominator as the clean subset of MBSF health data that is representative of the older population. The subset consists of the US elder population; notably, individuals under 64 who qualified because of a disability are excluded.