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. Please note that the programming costs do
not reflect the total costs of producing the SEER-Medicare data. The National
Cancer Institute subsidizes requests for the SEER-Medicare data.
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.
|
Cost of Cancer Data Files |
Cost of Non-cancer Data Files |
|
Data Production |
Media Charges |
Data Production |
Media Charges |
|
|
CD/DVD |
|
CD/DVD |
PEDSF |
$100 |
$10 total |
N/A |
MEDPAR |
$100 |
$10 total |
$50 |
$10 total |
NCH |
$75/year |
$10/year |
$200 (full file) |
$10 total |
HHA |
$250 |
$10 total |
$100 |
$10 total |
Hospice |
$250 |
$10 total |
$100 |
$10 total |
Outpatient |
$50/year |
$10/year |
$200 (full file) |
$10 total |
DME |
$250 |
$10 total |
$100 |
$10 total |
Sumdenom |
N/A |
$50 |
$10 total |
|