SEER-Medicare: Cost of Acquiring Data

The SEER-Medicare data files are created by IMS, the programming contractor for NCI. Outside researchers are asked to reimburse IMS for the cost of producing the data, as listed below. The quoted costs are for files containing cancers that are newly diagnosed in each year. Other analyses, such as identifying all persons who died of a selected cancer in a year, may require special programming at additional cost.

Please note that IMS cannot undertake extensive special programming. Additional cleaning and data modification are the responsibility of the investigator. In accordance with IMS-NCI contractual agreement, IMS will begin processing a data request upon receipt of payment.

All charges will be periodically reviewed to determine whether they are fairly recovering NCI's costs and may be changed without notice.

The charges shown here are effective October 15, 2002 and reflect a reduction in processing fees. The estimates are for creating data files for one cancer site. The data production and CD/DVD charges will be doubled for two to four cancer sites, tripled for five to seven cancer sites, quadrupled for eight to 10 cancer sites, and quintupled for 11 cancer sites or more. Please note that for all files except NCH and Outpatient, the data production costs include all calendar years. For example, the cost of MEDPAR data for 1986-2005 is $100. The NCH and Outpatient files are large, therefore the production costs for these files are for each calendar year. For example, the charge for NCH91 through NCH05 for one cancer site is $1,125 plus media charges.