Comparing NACOR and Medicare: The Importance of Co-Validation and Using Multiple Data Sources

ASA’s Health Policy Research Department (HPR) relies on data from many sources to conduct various analyses. The Medicare 5 percent Limited Data Set Standard Analytical Files (Medicare SAF) are currently our predominant data source, which houses the claims of a random 5 percent sample of all Medicare beneficiaries in the United States. In the near future, we plan to use more data from the National Anesthesia Clinical Outcomes Registry (NACOR), housed within the Anesthesia Quality Institute (AQI). To date, NACOR has captured billing information from more than 17 million clinical cases performed in the United States, and aims to capture the 40 million anesthetics and millions of pain clinic procedures performed each year by physician anesthesiologists in the United States. Collecting these data will allow for comparison across databases of patients, procedures and outcomes specific to anesthesia, which aligns...