The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) continues to evaluate our research data request and access policies, processes, and tools to ensure we are maximizing protections for controlled unclassified information (e.g., personally identifiable information and protected health information) while also enabling important research using CMS data. To further inform our next steps, CMS is seeking additional feedback from the research community. We are also releasing a summary of researcher feedback we received from CMS’ Request for Information released in February 2024.
For more information visit: https://www.cms.gov/data-research/files-order/data-disclosures-and-data-use-agreements-duas/important-research-data-request-access-policy-changes-0. Responses to CMS’ questions are due April 15, 2025.
As noted in previous updates, significant changes to the CMS research data request program won’t occur until at least 2026. CMS will share guidance on these changes at a future date to allow for researchers to have adequate time for planning.
The Chronic Conditions Warehouse (CCW) Virtual Research Data Center (VRDC) team has launched a new web page to communicate important news to users. The new “CCW VRDC News” page will replace the use of end-user notifications (EUNs) from CCW Help related to most data issues and important updates related to the CCW VRDC.
CMS receives numerous requests for data which are used to develop aggregated statistics, charts and graphs. The CCW’s Medicare Web Tables and Web Charts have been updated and are now available with data for years 2013-2022.
The Chronic Conditions Warehouse (CCW) Virtual Research Data Center (VRDC) is an alternative solution for accessing and analyzing CMS data for research purposes. To learn more about getting data for your research, refer to the About the VRDC and Requesting Access page, view the CCW VRDC FAQs and visit the ResDAC website.
As a research database, CCW users are generally expected to pay fees to access and use data. Costs vary depending on beneficiary cohort size, years of data and files ordered. In preparation for submitting a data request, a cost estimation tool allows users to create an estimated cohort size and determine an estimated cost before moving to the next level in the data request process.
View the Chronic Conditions Warehouse informational video to learn how you can access, analyze and aggregate all the data you need…like never before.
Welcome to the Chronic Conditions Data Warehouse
The CMS Chronic Conditions Data Warehouse (CCW) provides researchers with Medicare and Medicaid beneficiary, claims, and assessment data linked by beneficiary across the continuum of care. In the past, researchers analyzing data files were required to perform extensive analysis related to beneficiary matching, deduplication, and merging of the files in preparation for their study analysis. With the CCW data, this preliminary linkage work is already accomplished and delivered as part of the data files sent to researchers.
The Chronic Conditions Data Warehouse (CCW) is a research database designed to make Medicare, Medicaid, Assessments, Part C, and Part D Prescription Drug Event data more readily available to support research designed to improve the quality of care and reduce costs and utilization.