HRS Medicare Claims and Summary Data Cross-Reference

The Medicare Claims and Summary cross reference file allows researchers to link HRS/CMS Medicare data to other HRS data products. This file is created in four steps:

  1. HRS provides Acumen with a file of respondents (and matching information) who meet criteria for Medicare retrieval. This list is keyed on a sequence number created by HRS.
  2. Acumen links respondents to their CMS Medicare records using the matching information provided by HRS.
  3. For matched records, Acumen replaces the respondent's indentifiers with a unique identifier (BID), links that value to the HRS sequence number, and provides HRS with a sequence number to BID cross-reference file. Please note that the BID used here is NOT the same as the BID used to merge the Medicaid Analytic Extracts (MAX) cross reference.
  4. As a final step, HRS replaces the sequence number with HHID and PN, creating the Medicare Claims and Summary cross reference file.

Product Details

N
27,895
Product Type
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Data
Entry Cohort Info
HRS; AHEAD; CODA; War Baby; EBB, MBB
Latest Release November 2020
Version Notes

The current CMS data linkage includes HRS respondents interviewed through the 2018 wave who have consented to the Medicare data linkage. The HRS Medicare Claims and Summary Data Cross-Reference file is required in order to merge the CMS files created by Acumen LLC with HRS survey data.

Documentation and Links
Notes: 

The data file that you receive from Acumen LLC is keyed on a unique 9-character field that replaces the respondent's HIC. The name of this field is BID_HRS_24. In order to merge CMS records with HRS files, you need to replace the BID_HRS_24 identifier with HHID and PN using this cross-reference file.