Enhancing Hospital Data with Placekey: A Deep Dive into CMS Datasets

Merging datasets provides a fuller view of the data, making it easier to analyze, draw conclusions, and uncover patterns that individual datasets might miss. It also helps improve accuracy by comparing details across sources to find and correct errors.

However, combining datasets is often difficult because of inconsistencies in addresses or place names. While fuzzy matching can help, it comes with challenges. Placekey offers a faster, easier way to merge and clean datasets.

We used Placekey’s Join Datasets tool, in the developer dashboard, to combine the Hospitals Data Catalog and Hospitals Payment and Value of Care Dataset in just a few seconds. This should give us a more full picture of the data available from CMS, so let’s inspect further.

Insights of the Join

Applying Placekeys to these datasets revealed significant overlaps and insights. We applied Placekeys to 5,425 rows of the Hospitals dataset and 18,290 rows of the Payment Value dataset. Here’s what we discovered:

4,572 Placekeys were found matching between the datasets.

Hospital Data Catalog

• 84% of the Hospital Data Catalog found matches in the Hospital Payment and Value of Care dataset
• The Hospital Data Catalog added 4,572 entries on hospital types and emergency services information to the Hospital Payment and Value of Care dataset

 Hospital Payment and Value of Care Data

• 25% of the Hospital Payment and Value of Care dataset found matches in the Hospital Data Catalog
• The Hospital Payment and Value of Care dataset added 4,572 value of care metric names and categories to the Hospitals Data Catalog

How to Perform the Join Yourself

Sign up for Placekey to perform the join and download the datasets at no cost. Go to the Join Datasets section in the developer dashboard to begin.

You can also use the Bulk Upload section to submit a file or the API to add Placekeys to your datasets. Any method takes only a few minutes to set up.

Understanding the Datasets

The Hospitals Data Catalog provides information on Medicare-certified hospitals, Veterans Administration (VA) medical centers, and Department of Defense (DoD) hospitals. It includes data on hospital characteristics, services provided, and performance metrics. This dataset allows for an examination of the operational and service-level details of hospitals.

The Hospitals Payment and Value of Care dataset focuses on hospital payment and value-of-care metrics. It provides data on hospital payments, charges, and measures of the value of care delivered. This dataset supports analysis related to hospital financial performance and value-based care practices.

Both datasets originate from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and are part of CMS's efforts to promote transparency and accessibility of healthcare data.

What is Placekey?

Placekey is a universal standard identifier for physical places, helping with deduping, matching, syncing, and merging data. Learn more about Placekey's functionality here. Placekey is free for up to 10,000 look-ups a day, making it accessible for a wide range of uses.

Potential Use Cases

The combined dataset opens up numerous possibilities for analysis and modeling. Potential use cases include:

• Analyzing hospital cost reporting and CMS reimbursement rates.
• Developing machine learning models to predict Medicare hospital payments.
• Examining CMS payment models and value-based care payments.
• Exploring hospital financial management and billing guidelines.

Conclusion

Joining datasets using Placekey provides a streamlined approach to enriching healthcare data. By combining the CMS Hospital and Payment Value datasets, we gain deeper insights into hospital operations and payment structures. We encourage you to explore Placekey and see how it can enhance your data analysis efforts.