MAX DOD

What's New in February 2012!

The MAX DOD auxiliary file for 2008 and the accompanying report are now available.

Description

The regular MAX Person Summary (PS) files have been linked to the Social Security Administration's Death Master File (DMF) and include dates of death from the DMF for Medicaid enrollees that were linked to records from the DMF. Regular MAX files contain dates of death through December 31 of the year of the MAX file. For example, the MAX 2008 PS files include dates of death from the DMF through December 31, 2008.

The increased interest and funding for comparative effectiveness research (CER) on the Medicaid population has increased the use of MAX files. CER researchers often use death as an outcome measure, typically measuring duration until death or including an indicator of death in a time period. To support CER, it is beneficial to have the most up-to-date information on the date of death (DOD), including deaths that occurred after the MAX file year. Consequently, the MAX DOD auxiliary file is created to meet that need. For 2008, the MAX DOD auxiliary file is a single file that contains a record for each person in the MAX PS files 1999–2008 for all 51 states that linked to SSA DMF and had a non-missing date of death. It includes deaths, as reported in the DMF through October 29, 2011, even if those dates of death occurred after December 31, 2008. To merge the DOD auxiliary records with MAX PS records, the researcher will simply merge the files by state and MSIS ID. The 2008 DOD auxiliary file is sorted in the appropriate order to facilitate this linkage.

The MAX DOD report, available below in the Downloads section of this page, describes the design and production of the MAX Date of Death (DOD) auxiliary file created for the MAX years 1999 through 2008. It begins with an introduction and background on the Social Security Administration's (SSA) Death Master File (DMF) and the MAX Person Summary Files (PS). It describes the methodology for linking the SSA DMF with the MAX PS files, and it describes the resulting 2008 MAX DOD auxiliary file. The report also examines the results of the linkage across States and over time and identifies important limitations. Appendices include the data processing steps, the 2008 MAX DOD auxiliary file layout and data dictionary, and tables of the linkage results by year.