Cost Reports

HCRIS Data Request Disclaimer:

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has made a reasonable effort to ensure that the provided data/records/reports are up-to-date, accurate, complete, and comprehensive at the time of disclosure. This information reflects data as reported to the Healthcare Cost Report Information System (HCRIS) by Medicare Administrative Contractors. These reports are a true and accurate representation of the data on file at CMS. Authenticated information is only accurate as of the point in time of validation and verification. CMS is not responsible for data that is misrepresented, misinterpreted or altered in any way. Derived conclusions and analysis generated from this data are not to be considered attributable to CMS or HCRIS.
 

General Information:

Medicare-certified institutional providers are required to submit an annual cost report to a Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC). The cost report contains provider information such as facility characteristics, utilization data, cost and charges by cost center (in total and
for Medicare), Medicare settlement data, and financial statement data. CMS maintains the cost report data in the Healthcare Provider Cost Reporting Information System (HCRIS). HCRIS includes subsystems for the Hospital Cost Report (CMS-2552-96 and CMS-2552-10), Skilled Nursing Facility Cost Report (CMS-2540-96), Home Health Agency Cost Report (CMS-1728-94), Renal Facility Cost Report (CMS-265-94), Health Clinic Cost Report (CMS-222-92) and Hospice Cost Report (CMS-1984-99).

The data consists of every data element included in the HCRIS extract created for CMS by the provider's Administrative Contractor.

Cost Report Data Available:

Organization of data files: 

For the Hospital Form 2552-1996, Hospital Form 2552-2010 , SNF and HHA cost reports, there is one zipped file for each fiscal year. The links to these can be found on the "Downloads by Fiscal Year" page.

For the Hospice, Renal and Health Clinic cost reports, there is one zipped file each that contains all data for all the fiscal years. The links to these can be found on their section pages. 

Each zipped file contains the Report (Rpt);  Numeric(Nmrc);  and Alpha-Numeric(Alphnmrc) files for the fiscal year covered.  Additionally, Hospital, SNF and HHA data sets will contain a Rollup file for each year. These files may be unzipped with Winzip 8.0 or a higher version.

NOTE:  

The Hospital and Skilled Nursing Facility cost report data cannot be loaded into Microsoft Excel.  The numeric data file for both cost reports is too large for this application. 

Most of our data users are loading the data into Oracle, SAS, SPSS Statistical Package, Microsoft SQL Server, and DB2. Some users have reported successfully loading the data into Microsoft Access 2007; however, the stated limit from Microsoft is 2GB.  CMS does not support or provide any technical assistance of user's choice of data load. 

Please see the report specific documentation on the each cost report's web page. Send any further questions about this data to our Healthcare Cost Report Information System (HCRIS) mailbox HCRIS@cms.hhs.gov.. You can also send any special cost report data requests to this mailbox; however, there is a charge for customized data reports. 

Individual cost reports may be requested from the Medicare Administrative contractors via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). For more information on this process, visit the FOIA page.