NCHS has linked data from various surveys with Medicare program enrollment and health care utilization and expenditure data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Linkage of the NCHS survey participants with the CMS Medicare data provides the opportunity to study changes in health status, health care utilization and costs, and prescription drug use among Medicare enrollees. Medicare is the federal health insurance program for people who are 65 or older, certain younger people with disabilities, and people with End-Stage Renal Disease.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) created SyH-DR from eligibility and claims files for Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurance plans in calendar year 2016. SyH-DR contains data from a nationally representative sample of insured individuals for the 2016 calendar year. SyH-DR uses synthetic data elements at the claim level to resemble the marginal distribution of the original data elements. SyH-DR person-level data elements are not synthetic, but identifying information is aggregated or masked.