To understand the causes and consequences of differences in the efficiency of health care, it is crucial to have a comprehensive database with sufficient power to characterize detailed patterns of healthcare utilization at the region, hospital and physician levels, as well as other measures. Our goals are

1. To maintain a comprehensive and secure database of Medicare enrollment files, claims records, and supplementary files developed under the Dartmouth Atlas and other projects. The key tasks under this aim entail maintaining access to an increasingly massive database and obtaining and preparing for analysis additional data as they become available.
2. Where possible, to make the research files developed under this program project grant available to the research community. This includes the survey data (see the Premium page) and other data files (see Public Data page) with appropriate approval from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).