Health Services Data: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Claims Records

Preserving Access to CMS Data for Early-Career Researchers

“…These individual licenses are not only nontransferrable but also cost prohibitive for graduate students and early-career investigators. Project fees would rise from approximately $20 000 per project to between $80 000 and $200 000 per project to accommodate multiple individual licenses or “seats” on the CCW VRDC …”

“…Graduate students and early-career investigators will likely be the first ones to have access to data severed due to constraints on existing budgets, and they are also the least able to secure additional funding to support their own research. Additionally, researchers who are already systematically disadvantaged and underfunded are likely to see preexisting gaps in access widen.…”