For years, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has provided claims Physician/Supplier Procedure Summary Master File for any researcher  willing to pay for its access at $250 per year requested.

Every year starting 2012, CMS also releases a Public Dataset free of charge, including all physician claims of all procedures.  For privacy reasons, the public dataset includes only volumes greater than 10.

In this quest, I begin with the hope to use the 2014 public dataset to investigate lumbar punctures as performed by radiologists, neurologists, and other providers.  Then, as I encounter limitations to the public dataset, the remainder of the quest is dedicated to investigating this issue.

Howard Chen

Associate Informatics Officer at Cleveland Clinic Imaging Institute

(Howard) Po-Hao Chen, MD MBA is the Associate Informatics Officer at the Cleveland Clinic Imaging Institute and a musculoskeletal radiology subspecialist. He has an interest in data-driven radiology, quality improvement, and innovation. Howard has an MD and MBA from Harvard University, and he finished training with fellowships in musculoskeletal radiology, nuclear medicine, and clinical imaging informatics in June 2018 from University of Pennsylvania.