Mini MAX - Medicaid Sample

What’s New in April and May 2012!

The first version of Mini-MAX is now available.  Mini-MAX is a five percent cross-sectional national sample of the MAX files.  The sample is stratified by 51 states and by basis of eligibility (aged, disabled, children, and adults) among full beneficiaries and separately for restricted beneficiaries. We oversampled smaller states and smaller subpopulations to increase the precision of their estimates.  We removed variables that were less commonly used, redundant, or unreliable to reduce the file size.  By reducing the volume of the data, we hope to expand the community of individuals capable of conducting Medicaid research.  Because Medicaid data can be challenging to understand and use, we created a Mini-MAX User’s Guide, which provides background information and practical guidance for conducting analyses with the Mini-MAX file. The User’s Guide is available below in the “Downloads” section at “Mini-MAX User’s Guide”.

Description

Mini-MAX User’s Guide
Because a primary goal of Mini-MAX is to expand the community of researchers using Medicaid data, this User’s Guide is intended to support this community’s needs by providing background information on the Medicaid program, highlighting important features of the Mini-MAX files, and providing guidance to researchers about issues to be considered when conducting research with Mini-MAX.  The Appendices identify data elements in MAX that have been excluded from Mini-MAX, present references for supplemental resources, display summary statistics from MAX, and provide sample code for common tasks in a Mini-MAX analysis.  The User’s Guide is available below in the “Downloads” section at “Mini-MAX User’s Guide”.

Expanding Access to Medicaid Data for Research:  Feasibility of a MAX Sample (Mini-MAX)

While MAX data are a critical Medicaid research tool that is widely used by the research community, the size and complexity of the MAX files have limited their use for some members of the research community, especially those with limited computing capacity.  To facilitate wider use of MAX, CMS contracted with Mathematica to convene a technical expert panel (TEP) and determine the feasibility of creating a sample file for MAX.  This report describes the feasibility analysis and recommends the development of a “Mini-MAX” sample.  The report is available in the “Downloads” section below at "Mini-MAX Feasibility Study Final Report".