New public dataset maps Medicare home health use
Home Health Focus is a new publicly available data set representing home health use by Medicare beneficiaries at home health agency, county, and state levels from 2016 to 2019. The dataset was created to allow users to examine local and national trends without the costs or time-consuming process of entering into a data use agreement with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
"Home Health Focus: A new publicly available dataset to study community-dwelling populations receiving home health services" appears in The Annals of Family Medicine.
The dataset includes basic demographics and indicators of patient function and health status. From 2016 to 2019, home health use rose from 6,853,965 stays among 5,023,681 patients to 7,035,893 stays among 5,088,300 beneficiaries. During the same period, the number of active agencies fell from 11,727 to 10,681.
Home Health Focus lets researchers, policymakers and journalists quickly describe who uses home health, where they live, and how patterns change over time without a CMS data-use agreement.
More information:
Lacey Loomer et al, Home Health Focus: A New Publicly Available Dataset to Study Community-Dwelling Populations Receiving Home Health Services, The Annals of Family Medicine (2025). DOI: 10.1370/afm.250090
Provided by American Academy of Family Physicians
