Resources: FAQs

The MedRIC Enclave is a secure desktop that enables authorized users to analyze CMS and NIA survey data. For more Enclave information, visit the Enclave Page.

CMS, not MedRIC, decides whether your institution's secure enclave meets CMS security requirements. To determine whether your institution’s enclave does, contact the Research Data Assistance Center (ResDAC) at resdac@umn.edu.

The MedRIC DLA is a standard set of terms that define the CMS data that you'll get from us, the fees we charge for our services, and the legal obligations each of us has to other.

NOTE: You must obtain a Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Data Use Agreement (DUA) and survey approval before you can complete a MedRIC DLA.

To establish a MedRIC Data Licensing Agreement, you must:

1. Get an NIA survey partner’s approval to use the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) data of their survey participants for your research project.
2. Establish a CMS Data Use Agreement (DUA) through the Research Data Assistance Center (ResDAC).

3. Send us a copy of your CMS DUA materials, including the:

   • MedRIC Request Form;
   • Survey Partner Approval Letter; and
   • If applicable, the Long-Term Care Minimum Data Set (MDS) justification workbooks (2.0/3.0).
4. Sign the MedRIC DLA that we send you.
5. Pay the invoice that we send you.

Once we have received and processed your DLA and payment, we will prepare your data and distribute it to you.

Instead of request-based fees, we charge an annual data licensing fee of $1,000.

Our annual licensing fee covers the cost of extracting your Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) data files, distributing your data files to you, and responding to your data-related questions (e.g., what’s on our data, what it means, and what it is used for). Our annual licensing fee does not include any costs for purchasing CMS data.

To pay your annual licensing fee, either write a check to MedRIC or work with us to complete a wire transfer. Unfortunately, we do not accept credit card payments.

Refunds: We do not issue refunds in the event of complications with your DUA.

Additional Fees: CMS, the Research Data Assistance Center (ResDAC), or your study-relevant NIH survey may have fees in addition to our fees.

We worked with the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to make the DLA a standard agreement for all researchers. Because NIA oversees MedRIC's operations, we cannot implement changes to the MedRIC Data License Agreement (DLA)'s terms without NIA's approval.

As a result, we have established an annual DLA review process with NIA, which typically occurs in the fall. This process consists of:

1. compiling all the DLA feedback that our researcher affiliates have provided throughout a given year;
2. reconciling that feedback into coherent DLA revisions for NIA to review; and
3. obtaining NIA's authorization to implement said revisions.

If your organization chooses to wait until the fall for any edits to the terms and conditions of the DLA, we will revisit the DLA with you once we have NIA's feedback. Please bear in mind, though, that any suggested edits must work for all organizations (e.g., public and private universities as well as non-profit agencies) that have already signed the DLA. NIA may therefore refuse to accept your organization's suggested edits.

If you want to add data to your MedRIC Data License Agreement (DLA), you must:

1. obtain a new letter of approval from your survey partner;
2. update your CMS Data Use Agreement (DUA);
3. send both your survey letter and CMS DUA documents to us, after which we'll send you an updated DLA to sign; and
4. sign the updated DLA.

NOTE: You can add new data to your DUA without paying any additional fees to MedRIC. However, you need to work with ResDAC to determine if there are additional fees for amending your DUA.

We will send you a renewal reminder 30 days before your DLA expiration. This reminder will include our MedRIC DLA renewal form and DLA invoice.

To renew your MedRIC Data License Agreement (DLA), you must submit the following items:

• the MedRIC DLA renewal form (we will send this form to you);
• a copy of your most recent survey approval;
• a copy of your most recent Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Data Use Agreement (DUA);
• a copy of the MedRIC Request Form that CMS most recently approved for your study; and
• payment (check or wire transfer) for our $1,000 annual licensing fee.

If you are requesting Long-Term Care Minimum Data Set (MDS), then you will also need to submit ResDAC's MDS 2.0 and/or 3.0 justification workbooks.

If you do not plan to update or change the CMS data you already have, then you do not need to fill out the "Additional Files and/or File Years" table on the MedRIC Data License Agreement (DLA) update form.

For a full list of the data files available in MedRIC's data inventory, please visit the Data Inventory Page.

If you are interested in a data type or year(s) not available in our inventory, contact MedRIC Support at medric@acumenllc.com. We continuously work with NIH to increase the types of available data files, but we can not guarantee that we will be able to add your desired data file(s) to our inventory.

We recommend reviewing the Data Documentation page to determine whether our MedRIC research files contain the data you need. Depending on the encryption specifications that your NIH survey sets for your CMS data—Standard, Geographic, or Provider, you may be restricted from accessing certain variables.

For Assessment data and Part D Event data files, you must select the variables you need for your study in your Research Data Assistance Center (ResDAC) request materials. If CMS approves these variables, you will receive your requested variables in the data files we distribute to you.

We can only provide you with the data that your Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Data Use Agreement (DUA) and survey partner approval letter authorize you to receive. These data may not include all of the data and years specified in our most recent data dictionary update.

In addition, certain files may not be available in our data inventory due to low record counts, survey encryption specifications, or because we are pending CMS authorization to release data.

If you think that you should have access to certain variables or years of data that you do not currently have, email us at medric@acumenllc.com. We will then help you to determine the source of the missing data variables or years.

You can request one of three file formats in our MedRIC Request Form: R, SAS, and Stata.

If you have any data conversion requests or questions, email medric@acumenllc.com, and we'll respond shortly.

You merge CMS and survey data using our crosswalk file. This file maps MedRIC-generated beneficiary identifiers (BIDs) to survey participant identifiers.

To obtain a crosswalk file for your survey and CMS data sets, contact either:

• the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) for the HRS survey data set; or
• MedRIC for all other survey data sets.

In your email, state which data files you need to merge.

Yes, you can.

For HRS-specific research projects, you will need our Medicare-Medicaid crosswalk file, which we call our "Medicare-Medicaid conversion file." This Medicare-Medicaid conversion file maps MedRIC-generated beneficiary identifiers (BIDs) for Medicare beneficiaries to MedRIC-generated BIDs for Medicaid beneficiaries.

Since linking public use files (PUF) and MedRIC sensitive data files may produce re-identification risks, you'll need to contact the survey organization that governs rights to your survey data set to determine what's permissible.

Even if you receive approval for linking PUF and MedRIC files from the survey organization, having access to insufficient identifiers could limit your ability to link PUF to our CMS data sets.

Unfortunately, we do not offer consultation services for methodology-related questions. However, you can reach out to the Research Data Assistance Center (ResDAC) for suggestions.