Project: Standard Atlas End of Life Analysis

At The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice we have created a publicly available source of data providing researchers, payers, regulators, and innovators with metrics quantifying the temporal and regional patterns of health care spending and utilization, particularly with regard to the diffusion and exnovation of medical interventions. Atlas datasets can be found at https://atlasdata.dartmouth.edu/. Using CMS Medicare claims data (mostly for age >64 enrollees), the SAS programs include steps to build cohorts (population files or 'denominators') and the many Atlas measures or events (numerators) which are then used to create sets of rates by geography primarily for longitudinal analysis to see trends in variation across time and place. Here, we are publishing the programs and accompanying documentation used to support the development of the Dartmouth Atlas rates.