title: Leveraging the big-data revolution: CMS is expanding capabilities to spur health system transformation.
abstract: As the largest single payer for health care in the United States, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) generates enormous amounts of data. Historically, CMS has faced technological challenges in storing, analyzing, and disseminating this information because of its volume and privacy concerns. However, rapid progress in the fields of data architecture, storage, and analysis--the big-data revolution--over the past several years has given CMS the capabilities to use data in new and innovative ways. We describe the different types of CMS data being used both internally and externally, and we highlight a selection of innovative ways in which big-data techniques are being used to generate actionable information from CMS data more effectively. These include the use of real-time analytics for program monitoring and detecting fraud and abuse and the increased provision of data to providers, researchers, beneficiaries, and other stakeholders.
authors.affiliation: Niall Brennan (niall.brennan@cms.hhs.gov) is the acting director of the Offices of Enterprise Management, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), in Washington, D.C.
authors.forename: Niall
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Brennan
authors.affiliation: Allison Oelschlaeger is a special assistant in the Office of Information Products and Data Analytics, Offices of Enterprise Management, CMS.
authors.forename: Allison
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Oelschlaeger
authors.affiliation: Christine Cox is the acting director of the Office of Information Products and Data Analytics, Offices of Enterprise Management, CMS.
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cox
authors.affiliation: Marilyn Tavenner is the administrator of CMS, in Baltimore, Maryland.
authors.forename: Marilyn
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tavenner
mesh_terms: D014487:Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S.; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D057225:Data Mining / Q000379:methods*; D066264:Datasets as Topic; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D008484:Medicaid; D008490:Medical Informatics; D006278:Medicare; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D014481:United States
keywords: Health Reform; Medicaid; Medicare; Research And Technology