Research Brief
Background: Home Health Focus is a new publicly available data set representing home health use by Medicare beneficiaries at home health agency, county, and state levels from 2016 to 2019. The dataset was created to allow users to examine local and national trends without the costs or time-consuming process of entering into a data use agreement with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
What the Dataset Includes: The dataset includes basic demographics and indicators of patient function and health status. From 2016 to 2019, home health use rose from 6,853,965 stays among 5,023,681 patients to 7,035,893 stays among 5,088,300 beneficiaries. During the same period, the number of active agencies fell from 11,727 to 10,681.
Implications: Home Health Focus lets researchers, policymakers and journalists quickly describe who uses home health, where they live, and how patterns change over time without a CMS data-use agreement.
Lacey Loomer, PhD, et al
Department of Economics and Health Care Management, Labovitz School of Business and Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, Minnesota
The Annals of Family Medicine
New Public Dataset Maps Medicare Home Health Use
24-Nov-2025