The purpose of the project is to detect unreported Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipient admissions to Title XIX institutions. A file containing SSN's of SSI recipients (all eligible individuals and members of eligible couples in current pay) will be matched against the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) Minimum Data Set (MDS) database which contains admission, discharge, re-entry and assessment information about persons in Title XIX facilities for all 50 States and Washington, D.C. This database is updated monthly. The match will produce an output file containing MDS data pertinent to SSI eligibility on matched records. This data will be compared back to the SSR data to generate alerts to the Field Offices for their actions.

The Minimum Data Set (MDS) Frequency data summarizes health status indicators for active residents currently in nursing homes. The MDS is part of the Federally-mandated process for clinical assessment of all residents in Medicare and Medicaid certified nursing homes. This process provides a comprehensive assessment of each resident's functional capabilities and helps nursing home staff identify health problems. Care Area Assessments (CAAs) are part of this process, and provide the foundation upon which a resident's individual care plan is formulated. MDS assessments are completed for all residents in certified nursing homes, regardless of source of payment for the individual resident. MDS assessments are required for residents on admission to the nursing facility, periodically, and on discharge. All assessments are completed within specific guidelines and time frames. In most cases, participants in the assessment process are licensed health care professionals employed by the nursing home. MDS information is transmitted electronically by nursing homes to the national MDS database at CMS. When reviewing the MDS 3.0 Frequency files, some common software programs e.g., ‘Microsoft Excel’ might inaccurately strip leading zeros from designated code values (i.e., "01" becomes "1") or misinterpret code ranges as dates (i.e., O0600 ranges such as 02-04 are misread as 04-Feb). As each piece of software is unique, if you encounter an issue when reading the CSV file of Frequency data, please open the file in a plain text editor such as ‘Notepad’ or ‘TextPad’ to review the underlying data, before reaching out to CMS for assistance.

The Resident Assessment Instrument/Minimum Data Set (RAI/MDS) is a comprehensive assessment and care planning process used by the nursing home industry since 1990 as a requirement for nursing home participation in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The RAI/MDS provides data for monitoring changes in resident status that are consistent and reliable over time. The VA commitment to quality propelled the implementation of the RAI/MDS in its nursing homes now known as VA Community Living Centers (CLC). In addition to providing consistent clinical information, the RAI/MDS can be used as a measure of both quality and resource utilization, thereby serving as a benchmark for quality and cost data within the VA as well as with community based nursing facilities. Workload based on RAI/MDS can be calculated electronically by the interactions of the elements of the MDS data and grouped into 53 categories referred to as Resource Utilization Groups (RUG-IV). Residents are assessed quarterly. The data is grouped for analysis at the Austin Information Technology Center (AITC). Conversion to electronic data entry and transmission to the AITC was completed system-wide by year-end 2000. In 2010, the Centeres for Medicare and Medicaide Services released a significantly upgraded version, MDS 3.0, to begin to be implemented on October 1, 2011 in VHA CLCs. Training is underway currently. The MDS 3.0 will generate a new set of Quality Indicators and Quality Monitors as well the RUGs will increase to 64 RUGs from the current 53 RUG groups.

The Facility-Level Minimum Data Set (MDS) Frequency dataset provides information for active nursing home residents on topics, such as race/ethnicity, age, or marital status; discharge dispositions; hearing, speech, and vision; cognitive patterns; mood; functional abilities and goals; bladder and bowel; active diagnoses; health conditions; swallowing/nutritional status; oral/dental status; skin conditions; medications; special treatments, procedures, and programs; restraints and alarms; and participation in assessment and goal setting. Note: The MDS dataset contains more records than most spreadsheet programs can handle. The use of a database or statistical software is generally required. The dataset can be filtered to a more manageable size for use in a spreadsheet program by clicking on the “View Data” button. Additional filter information can be found in the methodology, if needed.