State Medicaid Outpatient Drug Utilization Data from 1992

1992 marks the start of this dataset, which reports drug utilization for outpatient drugs paid for by state Medicaid agencies. It is provided by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and includes state, drug name, National Drug Code, prescription counts, and reimbursement dollars. The data is sourced from the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program.

Use Cases

• Analyze state-level prescription drug spending trends based on dollars reimbursed.
• Compare utilization rates of specific drugs across states based on drug name and prescription counts.
• Study the impact of the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program based on the reported data fields.
• Track pharmaceutical market share within Medicaid based on National Drug Code (NDC) identifiers.

Strengths

• Data begins in 1992, providing a long-term perspective on Medicaid drug spending.
• Includes key metrics: number of prescriptions and dollars reimbursed.
• Sourced from an authoritative U.S. government agency, the Department of Health & Human Services.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

Collection Method

Reported by states for covered outpatient drugs paid for by Medicaid agencies.

Time Range

1992 onward

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-08 20:35:45.674074; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United States (state-level)