CMS Releases Vital Post-Acute Care and Hospice Provider Data for 2019

Situation Report | October 11, 2021 

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently posted the annual update of the Post-Acute Care and Hospice Provider Public Use File (herein known as “PAC PUF”) with data for 2019. The PAC PUF now has data available for years 2013-2019. 

The PAC PUF presents summarized information on services provided to Medicare beneficiaries by hospices, but also for home health agencies, Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs), Inpatient Rehabilitation Facilities (IRFs) and Long Term Care Hospitals (LTCHs). 

The update contains information on demographic and clinical characteristics of beneficiaries served, professional and paraprofessional service utilization, submitted charges and payments at the provider, state and national levels. Additionally, the PAC PUF includes payment information at the payment system level for home health agencies, SNFs and IRFs. 

Although the PAC PUF provides detailed payment and utilization information about hospice, home health and other Medicare services. HCA recommends that all home health and hospice providers review their own data and that of their peers, the dataset also has a number of limitations. The information presented in this file does not indicate the quality of care provided by individual providers; it only contains cost and utilization information. 

The data are not risk-adjusted and thus do not account for differences in the underlying severity of disease of patient populations treated by providers. For additional limitations, please review the methodology document available on the website. 

The 2019 PAC PUF summarizes information on nearly 15 million claims and over $69 billion in Medicare payments for 2019. It contains information on 9,001 home health agencies, 4,584 hospices, 14,532 SNFs, 1,106 IRFs and 358 LTCHs. CMS protects beneficiaries’ personal information in all public data releases.