Provider of Services File

Key facts

Published by

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)

Release schedule

Quarterly

Source

CMS survey and certification systems

Key identifier

CMS Certification Number (CCN)

Parts

QIES facilities, iQIES facilities, CLIA clinical laboratories

What is the Provider of Services file?

The Provider of Services file is the closest thing to a master list of Medicare-certified facilities. CMS builds it from the survey and certification records that state agencies maintain when they inspect and certify providers. Each row is one certified provider identified by its CMS Certification Number (CCN).

CMS releases the POS file in parts: hospitals and non-hospital facilities from the older QIES system, home health agencies, hospices, nursing homes, ambulatory surgical centers and other provider types from the newer iQIES system, and clinical laboratories certified under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA).

What a POS record contains

Typical fields include:

• CCN, facility name, street address, county and phone number.
• Provider category and subtype, such as short-term hospital, critical access hospital or skilled nursing facility.
• Original certification date and, for closed providers, termination date and reason.
• Type of control, such as for-profit, nonprofit or government.
• Capacity fields such as bed counts, and services offered.

Why the POS file matters

Because it includes terminated providers with their termination dates, the POS file is the standard source for counting openings and closures over time, such as rural hospital closures. It is also the backbone for joining facility-level datasets, since the CCN links it to cost reports, quality ratings and claims-based files.

Its limits are worth knowing. Some fields are only as current as the last survey, bed counts can be blank or zero for certain provider types, and the file describes certification, not who actually owns the facility today.