This page brings together the California Rural Indian Health Board (CRIHB) reports documenting a sustained effort to improve the identification of American Indian and Alaska Native people and Indian Health Programs in Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) data. The chronology begins in 2007 and follows the report series through the later Medicare analysis.
The reports are primary historical sources. They should be read as a sequence of data inventories, analyses, and recommendations—not as evidence that every recommendation was implemented or that all data gaps were resolved. The report titles below follow the versions currently available in the site’s media library.
Reports in chronological order
2007 — Identifying the data gaps
Gaps and Strategies to Improve American Indian and Alaska Native Data for Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP (August 31, 2007). This report reviews the adequacy of CMS data for identifying AI/AN enrollees and Indian health care providers, assessing enrollment, services, and payments, and recommends strategies for improving program and policy analysis. CRIHB’s CMS Data Reports page provides the organization’s report index.
2009 — Medicaid and Medicare program data
- American Indian and Alaska Native Medicaid Program and Policy Data Summary Report (2009).
- American Indian and Alaska Native Medicare Program and Policy Statistics Summary Report (2009).
2010–2012 — Medicaid and Medicare data collection
- American Indian and Alaska Native Medicaid Program and Policy Data (2010).
- American Indians and Alaska Natives: Medicaid State Data Collection (2010).
- Integrating Medicaid and Indian Health Service Data (2011) is listed in CRIHB’s CMS Data Reports index; a verified direct full-text link has not yet been located.
- Medicare Statistics for American Indians and Alaska Natives (2012) is cited in the site bibliography, but a verified full-text link has not yet been located.
2014 — Medicare enrollment, health status, service use, and payment
Medicare Enrollment, Health Status, Service Use and Payment Data for American Indians & Alaska Natives (February 2014). This later report examines Medicare data files and their usefulness for enrollment, service utilization, health status, and payment analysis.
How to read this history
Together, these reports document a progression from identifying limitations in CMS data systems to examining Medicaid and Medicare enrollment and utilization data. The historical question is not simply whether reports were produced, but which data problems were documented, what strategies were recommended, and what can be shown in later work to have changed.
The CMS–IHS Data Match is a distinct Medicaid enrollment effort and should not be conflated with the earlier CRIHB Medicare data reports. Medicare coverage analyses and the CMS–IHS Medicaid Data Match answer different questions and rely on different data sources.
Continue to the newer NIHB reports: CMS–IHS Data Match Report, October 2025 (2019–2023 Medicaid enrollment match); 2025 State Health Insurance Status Report (ACS-based coverage estimates); and the 2025 Tribal Health Data Symposium Report (data governance and access).
The newer reports extend the history, but they do not replace the earlier CRIHB studies. In particular, the ACS estimates and administrative Medicaid match use different populations and should be interpreted as complementary measures, not interchangeable counts.
Related material on this site
- Paper II — A History of CMS–IHS Tribal Data Improvement on the Publications page, plus the Paper II PDF.
- Graphics, including the chronology graphic on CRIHB contributions to CMS Tribal data improvement, 2007–2014.
- Bibliography.
- CRIHB’s CMS Data Reports index, which may help locate reports not yet available in the site archive.