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Generating Medicare Physician Quality

Technical Documents

Generating Medicare Physician Quality Performance Measurement Results (GEM) Project

Important Notes

The GEM project uses Medicare administrative data to generate medical group practice performance rates for 12 ambulatory measures. For more information about the format of the data files, measure specification and group specialty attribution, confidence intervals and limitations of the Medicare administrative data, see the Important Notes and Considerations for Using these Data document in the Downloads section.

Methodologies Used for the GEM Project

For detailed information about the methodologies used, including how medical group practices were identified and how Medicare beneficiaries were attributed to medical group practices, click the Physician and Other Medical Provider Grouping and Patient Attribution document in the Downloads section.

Functional Specifications

The GEM project calculates performance rates for medical group practices for 12 ambulatory measures. For a detailed explanation of measures used for the project, click the GEM Measure Functional Specifications document in the Downloads section.

Note on reading CSV files in Microsoft Excel

When using Excel to read GEM CSV files, Excel displays the values as numbers with no leading zeros. For example, a zip code such as 02186 is displayed as 2186 and a TIN of 005428754 is displayed as 5428754. Any data that does not have leading zeros (e.g., a zip code such as 11230) is displayed with all digits.

Once a CSV file is opened, there are methods available in Excel for modifying the display in order to see the leading zeros.  Some other software tools can also be instructed to properly treat digit-only data as characters and properly display the leading zeros.

Downloads

Important Notes and Consideration for Using these Data [PDF 130 KB]]

Physician and Other Medical Provider Grouping and Patient Attribution Methodologies [PDF 175 KB]

GEM Measure Functional Specification Document for 2006 Data  [PDF 223 KB]

GEM Measure Functional Specification Document for 2007 Data [PDF 547 KB]

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Page Last Modified: 01/13/2009 11:44:14 AM
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