USING SAS, SAS/ACCESS, AND SQL PASSTHROUGH TO QUERY AND JOIN ORACLE TABLES: An Example Using the Health Care Finance Administration’s SDPS (Medicare) Database

Medicare Encounter data is received by each state’s Peer Review Organization as an Oracle database known as the SDPS (Standard Data Processing System) data set. This data set is used for quality improvement projects, integrity investigations, and research. This data set is then queried with SAS software and the SAS SQL pass-through facility. Often the criteria for selecting data from the SDPS data set are contained in a preextracted SAS data set. Using the criterion information from the SAS data set, additional data is extracted from the SDPS database and merged or combined with the existing SAS data set or its information. In this example used to document comorbidities and disease progression for HIV, a SAS data set is run against the SDPS Oracle database to obtain subsequent admissions and diagnoses for each patient (Medicare beneficiary). This paper illustrates four methods for performing this query using SAS/ACCESS, SAS/CONNECT, and Proc SQL.