CMS Updates Inpatient Hospital and Outpatient Hospital PUFs

To further demonstrate the agency’s continued commitment toward improving price transparency, today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a 2017 update to the Hospital Inpatient Utilization and Payment Public Use File (Inpatient PUF) and the Hospital Outpatient Utilization and Payment Public Use File (Outpatient PUF).

The Inpatient PUF includes summarized information on inpatient discharges paid under the Medicare Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) for Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries. The data include discharges, average Medicare payments and average hospital charges organized by hospital provider and Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Group (MS-DRG). The new 2017 dataset includes information on more than 3,000 hospital providers who collectively received $111 billion in Medicare payments. The 2017 data and supplemental information are available at: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Medicare-Provider-Charge-Data/Inpatient2017.html

The Outpatient PUF includes summarized information on outpatient services paid under the Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) for Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries. The data includes the number of services, Medicare payments, and hospital charges organized by hospital provider and comprehensive Ambulatory Payment Classifications (C-APCs).  The number of reported C-APCs increased from 35 in 2016 to over 60 C-APCs in 2017. The C-APCs reported in 2017 account for 33% of the total $53.1 billion in Medicare OPPS payments. The number of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries is a new addition to the Outpatient PUF data and has also been added to the 2015 and 2016 Outpatient PUFs. The 2017 data and supplemental information are available at: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Medicare-Provider-Charge-Data/Outpatient2017.html