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Generating Medicare Physician Quality Performance Measurement Results (GEM) Project
Important Notes The GEM project uses Medicare administrative data to generate medical group practice performance rates for 12 ambulatory measures. For more information about the format of the data files, measure specification and group specialty attribution, confidence intervals and limitations of the Medicare administrative data, see the Important Notes and Considerations for Using these Data document in the Downloads section. Methodologies Used for the GEM Project For detailed information about the methodologies used, including how medical group practices were identified and how Medicare beneficiaries were attributed to medical group practices, click the Physician and Other Medical Provider Grouping and Patient Attribution document in the Downloads section. TIN/UPIN Crosswalks Information about the Unique Provider Identification Numbers (UPIN) associated with each medical group practice, or Tax Identification Number (TIN), is provided in the TIN/UPIN Crosswalks found in the Downloads section below (Excel, Access and comma-separated-value or csv files). The TIN information included in the GEM project was extracted from the Standard Data Processing System (SDPS) database. When a TIN had multiple records in the Physician Group table, one record was randomly selected to assign the medical practices' name, State and address for that TIN. Limitations of reading data files in Excel: Microsoft Excel version 2007 must be used to read the TIN/UPIN downloadable files. Using earlier versions of the software will present only 65,536 lines on each worksheet, resulting in the omission of data. Access, csv and Excel 2007 will show complete datasets. Functional Specifications The GEM project calculates performance rates for medical group practices for 12 ambulatory measures. For a detailed explanation of measures used for the project, click the GEM Measure Functional Specifications document in the Downloads section. Note on reading CSV files in Microsoft Excel When using Excel to read GEM CSV files, Excel displays the values as numbers with no leading zeros. For example, a zip code such as 02186 is displayed as 2186 and a TIN of 005428754 is displayed as 5428754. Any data that does not have leading zeros (e.g., a zip code such as 11230) is displayed with all digits. Once a CSV file is opened, there are methods available in Excel for modifying the display in order to see the leading zeros. Some other software tools can also be instructed to properly treat digit-only data as characters and properly display the leading zeros.
Page Last Modified: 10/08/2009 12:57:13 PM
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