Resident Assessment Instrument/Minimum Data Set (RAI/MDS)

The Resident Assessment Instrument/Minimum Data Set (RAI/MDS) is a comprehensive assessment and care planning process used by the nursing home industry since 1990 as a requirement for nursing home participation in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The RAI/MDS provides data for monitoring changes in resident status that are consistent and reliable over time. The VA commitment to quality propelled the implementation of the RAI/MDS in its nursing homes now known as VA Community Living Centers (CLC). In addition to providing consistent clinical information, the RAI/MDS can be used as a measure of both quality and resource utilization, thereby serving as a benchmark for quality and cost data within the VA as well as with community based nursing facilities. Workload based on RAI/MDS can be calculated electronically by the interactions of the elements of the MDS data and grouped into 53 categories referred to as Resource Utilization Groups (RUG-IV). Residents are assessed quarterly. The data is grouped for analysis at the Austin Information Technology Center (AITC). Conversion to electronic data entry and transmission to the AITC was completed system-wide by year-end 2000. In 2010, the Centeres for Medicare and Medicaide Services released a significantly upgraded version, MDS 3.0, to begin to be implemented on October 1, 2011 in VHA CLCs. Training is underway currently. The MDS 3.0 will generate a new set of Quality Indicators and Quality Monitors as well the RUGs will increase to 64 RUGs from the current 53 RUG groups.

Data and Resources

This dataset has no data

Field Value
accessLevel non-public
bureauCode {029:15}
catalog_@context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
catalog_@id https://www.data.va.gov/data.json
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catalog_describedBy https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
dataQuality true
identifier VA-VHA-GER-003
issued 2017-07-26
landingPage https://www.data.va.gov/d/bk5m-88q6
language {en-US}
license https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
modified 2020-12-01
programCode {029:054}
publisher Department of Veterans Affairs
resource-type Dataset
rights Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, protected health information.
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash ae24526eba0a26ef210bbc43f342b71d34b27942
source_schema_version 1.1
systemOfRecords https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-05-11/pdf/2012-11487.pdf
temporal 2001-01-01T05:00:00Z/2014-12-31T05:00:00Z
theme {"Basic Statistics",Use,"and Operational Data"}
Groups
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • National Provider
  • North America
Tags
  • amerigeo
  • amerigeoss
  • assessment
  • benchmark
  • center
  • ckan
  • community
  • geo
  • geoss
  • home
  • indicator
  • instrument
  • living
  • mds
  • minmum
  • national
  • north-america
  • nursing
  • patient
  • quality
  • resident
  • rug
  • united-states
  • va
  • veteran
isopen True
license_id cc-zero
license_title Creative Commons CCZero
license_url http://www.opendefinition.org/licenses/cc-zero
maintainer VHA Open Data
maintainer_email vhaopendata@va.gov
metadata_created 2025-11-22T12:27:43.539753
metadata_modified 2025-11-22T12:27:43.539757
notes <p>The Resident Assessment Instrument/Minimum Data Set (RAI/MDS) is a comprehensive assessment and care planning process used by the nursing home industry since 1990 as a requirement for nursing home participation in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The RAI/MDS provides data for monitoring changes in resident status that are consistent and reliable over time. The VA commitment to quality propelled the implementation of the RAI/MDS in its nursing homes now known as VA Community Living Centers (CLC). In addition to providing consistent clinical information, the RAI/MDS can be used as a measure of both quality and resource utilization, thereby serving as a benchmark for quality and cost data within the VA as well as with community based nursing facilities. Workload based on RAI/MDS can be calculated electronically by the interactions of the elements of the MDS data and grouped into 53 categories referred to as Resource Utilization Groups (RUG-IV). Residents are assessed quarterly. The data is grouped for analysis at the Austin Information Technology Center (AITC). Conversion to electronic data entry and transmission to the AITC was completed system-wide by year-end 2000. In 2010, the Centeres for Medicare and Medicaide Services released a significantly upgraded version, MDS 3.0, to begin to be implemented on October 1, 2011 in VHA CLCs. Training is underway currently. The MDS 3.0 will generate a new set of Quality Indicators and Quality Monitors as well the RUGs will increase to 64 RUGs from the current 53 RUG groups.</p>
num_resources 0
num_tags 25
title Resident Assessment Instrument/Minimum Data Set (RAI/MDS)