Finding and Using Health Statistics

4. Finding Health Statistics Exercises

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)


The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is the U.S. federal agency that works with state governments to manage the Medicare program and administer Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance program. CMS offers many great resources for researchers who are looking for health data. For example:

  • CMS Statistics is a yearly reference booklet that people can download on the CMS website. It has summary information about health care expenses and use for the 2003-2016 period. More detailed Medicare data are available in the CMS Program Statistics on an annual basis, beginning with calendar year 2013.
  • The Medicare and Medicaid Statistical Supplement has detailed statistics on Medicare, Medicaid, and other CMS programs. It has 115 tables and 67 charts that detail health expenditures for the entire U.S. population for the 2001-2013 period. Similar information is available in the CMS Data Compendium (published from 2002-2003, 2006-2011) and the CMS Program Statistics (available on an annual basis with data starting in 2013).1
  • Hospital Compare is an online tool created by CMS that helps users find information about the quality of care at over 4,000 Medicare-certified hospitals, nursing homes, and other providers across the United States.
  • The CMS Data Navigator lets users search across all CMS programs using a menu-driven search application. Users can specify a particular type of data, or search for all available data types.

Exercises

  1. Using CMS Program Statistics, what was the total Medicare enrollment for calendar year 2020?


  1. What was the percentage increase in Medicare enrollment from calendar year 2019 to calendar year 2020?


1. "Medicare & Medicaid Statistical Supplement." CMS.Gov, 1 Dec. 2021, www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/archives/mmss.

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