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    • Minimum Data Set Frequency

    Metadata Updated: January 28, 2026

    The Minimum Data Set (MDS) Frequency data summarizes health status indicators for active residents currently in nursing homes. The MDS is part of the Federally-mandated process for clinical assessment of all residents in Medicare and Medicaid certified nursing homes. This process provides a comprehensive assessment of each resident's functional capabilities and helps nursing home staff identify health problems. Care Area Assessments (CAAs) are part of this process, and provide the foundation upon which a resident's individual care plan is formulated. MDS assessments are completed for all residents in certified nursing homes, regardless of source of payment for the individual resident. MDS assessments are required for residents on admission to the nursing facility, periodically, and on discharge. All assessments are completed within specific guidelines and time frames. In most cases, participants in the assessment process are licensed health care professionals employed by the nursing home. MDS information is transmitted electronically by nursing homes to the national MDS database at CMS.

    When reviewing the MDS 3.0 Frequency files, some common software programs e.g., ‘Microsoft Excel’ might inaccurately strip leading zeros from designated code values (i.e., "01" becomes "1") or misinterpret code ranges as dates (i.e., O0600 ranges such as 02-04 are misread as 04-Feb). As each piece of software is unique, if you encounter an issue when reading the CSV file of Frequency data, please open the file in a plain text editor such as ‘Notepad’ or ‘TextPad’ to review the underlying data, before reaching out to CMS for assistance.

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: See this page for license information.

    Downloads & Resources

    References

    https://data.cms.gov/resources/minimum-data-set-frequency-methodology

    Dates

    Metadata Created Date August 22, 2023
    Metadata Updated Date January 28, 2026
    Data Update Frequency R/P3M

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from Healthdata.gov

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date August 22, 2023
    Metadata Updated Date January 28, 2026
    Publisher Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
    Maintainer
    Identifier https://data.cms.gov/data-api/v1/dataset/4b50bbe6-a496-4eda-b03b-5f835937f81b/data-viewer
    Data First Published 2025-12-09
    Language en-US
    Data Last Modified 2026-01-27
    Category Medicare, Medicaid
    Public Access Level public
    Data Update Frequency R/P3M
    Bureau Code 009:38
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Metadata Catalog ID https://healthdata.gov/data.json
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Data Quality True
    Data Dictionary https://data.cms.gov/resources/minimum-data-set-frequency-data-dictionary
    Harvest Object Id 0eb6ccec-3671-44e6-b622-ea75e656ebd3
    Harvest Source Id 651e43b2-321c-4e4c-b86a-835cfc342cb0
    Harvest Source Title Healthdata.gov
    Homepage URL https://data.cms.gov/quality-of-care/minimum-data-set-frequency
    License https://www.usa.gov/government-works
    Program Code 009:000
    Related Documents https://data.cms.gov/resources/minimum-data-set-frequency-methodology
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash a09c535f18673b8348bb0b0dc168f4983b34d48a8c36edc7d82e9495dac7d485
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Temporal 2020-01-01/2025-12-31

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