Medicare Beneficiaries, Costs, Utilization, & Quality

This database provides county-level Medicare beneficiary demographics, Prevention Quality Indicators (PQI), readmission rates, and service-level costs and utilization.  Standardized data removes geographic differences in payment rates for individual services i.e.. removed adjustments that Medicare makes to account for local wages or input prices. Risk-adjusted reflects costs adjusted for differences in beneficiaries’ health using a risk-adjustment model that CMS uses to pay Medicare Advantage plans.  See this glossary for more definitions.