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Medicare spending and utilization by drug, hospital and geography

CMS public use files for 2014 to 2024 as 13 typed tables: Part D, Part B and Medicaid drug spending, inpatient and outpatient hospital payments, and geographic variation.

Coverage: United States, 2014 to 2024. Drug spending covers 2020 to 2024. Geographic variation carries 241 measures at national, state and county level for 2014 to 2024. The outpatient tables do not include Maryland.

Why pay for public data

CMS publishes these as separate downloads with different layouts, suppression markers and column changes from year to year. This build types every column, reconciles the years and documents all 479 columns in one dictionary.

How it is built

  1. 1

    Pull the public use files from data.cms.gov.

  2. 2

    Type every column, reconcile layouts across years, and build DRUG and HOSPITAL reference tables so the spending tables join cleanly.

  3. 3

    Keep CMS suppression as published: cells under 11 stay empty. Leave out every row keyed on a CPT code, because the American Medical Association owns CPT. HCPCS Level II and MS-DRG rows are kept. Rebuilt annually.

What is in each record

FieldNotes
PARTD_DRUG_SPENDINGBRND_NAME, GNRC_NAME, MFTR_NAME, TOT_SPNDNG, TOT_CLMS, TOT_BENES, AVG_SPND_PER_DSG_UNT_WGHTD
PARTB_DRUG_SPENDINGHCPCS_CD and AVG_ASP_PRICE. 33 of 799 product codes are withheld and flagged
MEDICAID_DRUG_SPENDING78,198 rows
PARTD_PRESCRIBERS_BY_GEOGRAPHYTOT_PRSCRBRS, TOT_CLMS, TOT_DRUG_CST and OPIOID_DRUG_FLAG. State and national totals only, with no prescriber rows
INPATIENT_BY_HOSPITALCCN, DRG_CD, TOT_DSCHRGS, AVG_SUBMTD_CVRD_CHRG, AVG_TOT_PYMT_AMT, AVG_MDCR_PYMT_AMT
OUTPATIENT_BY_HOSPITALAPC_CD, APC_DESC, BENE_CNT and payment averages
GEOGRAPHIC_VARIATIONBENES_TOTAL_CNT, MA_PRTCPTN_RATE, TOT_MDCR_STDZD_PYMT_PC and 238 more measures
PHYSICIAN_BY_GEOGRAPHYHCPCS Level II services only, by state and nation
DATA_YEAROn every spending and utilization row

Who uses it

  • Pharma market-access and pricing analysts
  • Hospital strategy and payer contracting teams
  • Health economists and policy researchers

Pricing

$990 a year, including each annual refresh.

No personal contact data is collected or sold in any QuestionPunk dataset.

Questions

Is this data not free from the government?
Yes. The source files are public and we link to them. You pay for the cleaning, the joins, the documented schema and the refresh, not for the data itself.
How is it delivered?
As Parquet or CSV files, by download link or to your own cloud bucket. The same tables load into Snowflake with the scripts we include. A Snowflake Marketplace listing is being set up and is not live yet.
Can I see the data before paying?
Yes. Ask for a sample and we send the Vermont rows from the hospital and geography tables, the drugs whose brand name starts with A, and the full data dictionary.
Does it include patient, doctor or prescriber records?
No. Everything is aggregate: by drug, by hospital, by state or by county. There are no patient records, no clinician or prescriber rows, and no NPI directory.
Is drug spending net of rebates?
No. CMS reports gross spending, before manufacturer rebates. The tables keep it that way and say so.

Tell us what you need

Geography, size and fields. A two-line email is enough, and a person replies.

Request a sample

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