Date/Time: Sunday August 5, 2012 from 8:00 am-Noon
Description: All hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and other health care providers that receive reimbursement from Medicare must complete an annual Medicare Cost Report. This document ties directly to financial statements and contains detailed cost and revenue information about the health care provider. Much of this information is publicly available. By gaining an understanding of the rules of completing the cost report a researcher can effectively use the data in health care related research projects.
This session is conducted by a hospital Director of Internal Audit with over fifteen years experience completing and auditing the Medicare Cost Report. The goal of this session is to give participants the framework necessary so that they can use the data in healthcare related research projects. The instructor will cover key worksheets and explain how the data is interrelated. A substantial part of the session is to explain the step-down process of cost allocation.
Researchers can identify relationships between assets, detailed expenses such as nursing, pharmacy and other ancillary costs, bad debt and hospital demographics. The instructor will identify where a research can obtain data for U.S. hospitals.
Field of Study: Specialized Knowledge and Applications
Program Level: Intermediate
Method of Delivery: Group — Live
Intended Audience: Researchers who are looking for data that can be used in health care related projects. This session may be especially valuable to doctoral students who are looking for data sources for dissertation related research. The instructor will review data sources and additional sources that proved corroborating data such as quality indicators.
Format/Structure: The session is set up as a lecture with time allotted to questions from the participants. Information will be provided to participants prior to the class to allow them to review data. The instructor will review worksheets and show how data can be extracted from specific worksheets.
Learning Objective: Understand each worksheet of the Medicare Cost Report. Understand what data is publicly available and how to obtain the data. Understand the relationship of cost report data to the financial statement. Understand what other data can be used in conjunction with Cost Report data.
Prerequisites: Participants will receive information including web links prior to the session so they can review the available data.
Advanced Preparation Required: Participants will receive information prior to the session. This will allow the participant to gain a general understanding of the Cost Report and what data is publicly available.
