Frequently Asked Questions

If the data arrives late, it may miss the quarterly posting. However, it will be included in the next quarter's web posting.

Amounts reimbursed by Medicaid are pre-rebate, not net of rebates.

States are required to submit their utilization data to CMS within 60 days of the end of the rebate period.

Per section 1927 of the Act, initial submissions of quarterly state utilization data are due to CMS within 60 days of the end of each rebate period. If a state fails to report utilization data in the quarter that it was dispensed, the state must submit initial utilization data for the most recently closed quarter as well as adjustments/corrections to any previously reported utilization data.

Drug coverage under Medicaid is an optional benefit for the states. However, if a state opts to cover prescription drugs in their Medicaid program, they must participate in the MDRP.  As part of that participation in the MDRP, states are required to submit quarterly drug utilization data to CMS.  All states and the District of Columbia currently participate in the MDRP; therefore, they all submit quarterly drug utilization data to CMS.

State-only program utilization (e.g. ADAP) should not be included in the Federal State Medicaid Drug Rebate Program.

The drug utilization data that states report to CMS is reported at the NDC level. Therefore, for purposes of the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program (MDRP), crosswalk from HCPCS code to NDC should have already occurred prior to the states reporting their drug utilization data to CMS. Medicare Part B does post a HCPCS to NDC crosswalk ; however, please note that the subset of drugs covered under Part B is much smaller than  the drugs covered under the MDRP. Therefore, you may not find this crosswalk to be all-inclusive of every product covered under the MDRP.

States should identify and exclude 340B claims from 340B providers before submitting their state drug utilization data to CMS.

If a covered outpatient drug is billed as an outpatient drug and not part of a bundled service, it is rebate-eligible.

As CMS is obligated by the Federal Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. Section 552a and the HIPAA Privacy Rule, 45 C.F.R Parts 160 and 164, to protect the privacy of individual beneficiaries and other persons, all direct identifiers have been removed and data that are less than eleven (11) counts are suppressed. An asterisk (*) notes suppressed data. CMS applies counter or secondary suppression in cases where only one prescription is suppressed for primary reasons, e.g. one prescription in a state. Also, if one sub-group (e.g. number of prescription) is suppressed, then the other sub-group is suppressed.

See Also:

• What fields changed when CMS moved the State Drug Utilization Data (SDUD) to data.medicaid.gov?
• What are the data field descriptions for the State Drug Utilization Data (SDUD)?
• Is the redacted State Drug Utilization Data (SDUD) available to the public?