• Transcript of the call

• Press release

• Audio of the call (the recording cuts off after 47 minutes)

• A replay is available by calling 855-859-2056 or 404-537-3406  and entering conference ID # 11438795.

Accessing Medicare.gov’s Compare Tool Data

In addition to accessing Medicare.gov‘s Compare tools through our websites (Nursing Home Compare, Hospital Compare, Home Health Compare and Dialysis Facility Compare), there are other methods available to get and interact with our data. All of the data from the Medicare.gov Compare Tools are available at data.Medicare.gov for online access and reuse. In addition to viewing the data in your browser, you can download the data in a variety of formats. More importantly, you can also access the data through an Application Programming Interface, or API, which lets you interact in real time with the same data we use to power the Medicare.gov website.

For more information about the available APIs, please visit dev.socrata.com. All data posted to data.medicare.gov are in the public domain and open for reuse. Please note that Medicare.gov does not endorse any third-party tools or resources built with our data.

Although we do not yet have fully mobile-optimized versions of the Medicare.gov Compare Tools in place yet, we are working toward this goal and will update this information as mobile-optimized enhancements come online.

Join AHCJ on Thursday, July 19, at 11:30 a.m. ET, for an exclusive members-only conversation with officials from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services about the rollout of major new additions to the Nursing Home Compare and Hospital Compare websites. You won’t want to miss this.

Many of you are familiar with the Compare websites as sources for information about nursing home citations, hospital patient satisfaction scores, as well as mortality and readmission information. CMS has redesigned the sites and will be launching them on Thursday.

For you, the most useful additional information will probably be the addition of actual narrative text of nursing home deficiency reports onto Nursing Home Compare. Those of you who have attended AHCJ conferences or read our tip sheets know how much veteran reporters value inspection reports (often known as 2567 forms) for what goes on behind-the-scenes at health facilities. The information goes beyond what data points reveal. For the first time, CMS is going to put this information on the web for everyone to read. Previously, you had to submit a FOIA for this information to CMS or you had to visit a nursing home and ask for them.

In addition, CMS will be posting information about antipsychotic use at every nursing home in the country. The Boston Globe recently ran a series about the variability in use of these drugs across the country. [Read how that story was reported.] The data will help you localize the story to your community/state.

Finally, Hospital Compare will be updated to include new metrics on overuse of imaging services, a topic in the news recently because of the potential for excess radiation. And some data on the Compare sites will be updated.

To join the discussion

You can test your browser in advance by clicking on this link.

Call 877-415-5282 and enter conference ID # 11438795 at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday. There will also be a web component to follow along with the presentation. Click here and login as a guest to access that.

A replay will be available after 12:30 pm ET on July 19 by calling 855-859-2056 or 404-537-3406  and entering conference ID # 11438795.

This discussion will include both an on-the-record component with CMS deputy chief medical officer Shari Ling and a background, technical portion (not to be quoted) with CMS technical experts who can answer nuts-and-bolts questions.

If you have any questions, please send them to charles.ornstein@propublica.org