Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act

MACRA

clinical

Updated 5/16/2026

Definition

Federal legislation enacted in 2015 replacing the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate formula with the Quality Payment Program, introducing MIPS and APM tracks. Drives provider performance data collection, quality measure reporting pipelines, and payment adjustment calculations stored in CMS and payer analytics data warehouses.

Standard Abbreviation

MACRA

Database Usage

-- Example column naming
CREATE TABLE claims (
  clm_id VARCHAR(50),
  macra VARCHAR(100),  -- Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (max 100 chars)
  ...
);

-- Example in SELECT
SELECT
  clm_id,
  macra as medicare_access_and_chip_reauthorization_act
FROM claims;

Common uses in healthcare data

Risk stratification and population health analytics
CMS-HCC risk adjustment and RAF score calculation
Quality measure attribution and HEDIS reporting
Clinical data warehouse schema design
Value-based care contract performance tracking

Example database column name

ISO-11179 snake_case standard

-- Recommended column name
macra

-- Example DDL
CREATE TABLE healthcare_data (
  record_id   VARCHAR(50)   NOT NULL,
  macra        VARCHAR(100),  -- Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (max 100 chars)
  created_dt  TIMESTAMP     NOT NULL DEFAULT NOW()
);

Column names follow the ISO-11179 naming convention: lowercase, underscore-separated, using the standard abbreviation as a prefix where applicable.

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