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November/14/2025

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DQ Atlas is an interactive, web-based tool that helps policymakers, analysts, researchers, and other stakeholders explore the quality and usability of the Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System (T-MSIS) Analytic Files (TAF). The TAF includes data on Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) enrollment, demographics, service utilization, payments, providers, and managed care plans.

Below is information on new resources that have been added as of November 13, 2025.

Updates to analyses and data in DQ Atlas

DQ Atlas now includes new DQ Assessments that correspond to the 2024 Preliminary TAF RIF Release, which include updated data from states and the following changes.

• Renamed topic from 'Gender' to 'Sex' to align with TAF definitions.

DQ Atlas now includes 2 new resources on the Analytic Briefs page, listed below:

• The Using T-MSIS and TAF to Measure State Expenditures and Expenditures to Providers research brief, developed in 2023, describes methods and key considerations for using TAF to measure Medicaid and CHIP expenditures on beneficiary care, defined at the state level or as the sum of provider payments. The methods described in this brief can help researchers using TAF data for expenditure analyses determine (1) which scope of benefits to include in the analysis, (2) which services to examine, (3) how to account for variations in service delivery across states, and (4) how to handle provider payments that cannot be assigned to individual beneficiaries.

• The State-Level Variations in Medicaid Fee-for-Service Use and Spending Patterns in TAF research brief, developed in 2025, presents a TAF-based analysis of the extent of fee-for-service (FFS) delivery and payment systems among state Medicaid programs from 2017 to 2022. The brief also explores FFS patterns by beneficiary dual eligibility status and among the top 10 service categories with the highest expenditures in 2022. The brief aims to help researchers using TAF data understand the variation in FFS use across state programs and key considerations for using TAF eligibility, claims, or expenditure data to measure FFS trends among Medicaid and CHIP beneficiaries.

As of October 2025, DQ Atlas includes the updated technical documentation listed below in the DQ Atlas and TAF Resource Downloads section of the Resources page under 'Technical documentation for using TAF RIF, TAF, and T-MSIS data'.

• Updates to the TAF Technical Documentation: Annual Demographic & Eligibility (DE) File include revisions to recommended methods to align with current best practices and findings on state-specific reporting, including (1) identifying beneficiaries by eligibility category, (2) identifying the expansion population, and (3) identifying beneficiaries by benefits category. Changes made to this documentation are outlined in the revision history table in Appendix A of the documentation.

See Release Notes for more information on previous updates to DQ Atlas.