Medical Researchers Need Access to The Social Security Death Master File
The Social Security Public Death Master File (DMF) has served as a valuable source of data for medical researchers, providing information critical for long-term survival and epidemiological studies. The DMF includes death records received by the Social Security Administration (SSA) from families, hospitals, funeral homes and financial institutions dating from 1936 to the present. Since 2002, the DMF has also included death records supplied by state governments, which constitute approximately 35% of the newest death records located in the DMF. However, as of November 1, 2011, the SSA no longer discloses state-supplied death records in the public version of the DMF. Because state records constitute such a large portion of the most current and relevant data in the DMF, the loss of this affordable database of death records has substantial negative implications for medical researchers and other groups who rely on the data for financial and research purposes. The American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) has been working with other specialty societies to advocate for restored access to the full DMF for medical researchers.
Importance of the DMF to Medical Research
The DMF is a popular research tool because it is updated weekly and the full DMF file plus weekly updates can cost as little as $8,500 annually. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) keeps a more complete record of deaths, but the CDC database is only updated annually and can cost much more than the DMF to use for larger studies because the cost of use increases with the number of individuals searched. Therefore, the DMF is an important and affordable, though incomplete, source of data for medical researchers and practitioners, as well as members of the financial services industry and individuals performing genealogical research.
Medical researchers use the DMF to track the mortality rates of organ transplant recipients, monitor the survival rates of participants in long-term research studies, and evaluate the safety and effectiveness of various procedures and medical devices by comparing survival outcomes. The DMF is particularly useful in helping researchers track subjects who have moved and cannot be located or who have continued treatment in different institutions. Additionally, because the DMF includes the age, location, and other demographic data of decedents, researchers can study the effect of these variables on mortality outcomes. Without such information, these subjects would not be included in research results, affecting the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the studies.
According to the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), the government agency responsible for managing access to the DMF, insurance companies, fraud prevention companies, and financial institutions use the DMF to ensure the accuracy and legitimacy of various transactions. For example, insurance companies regularly check the DMF to confirm that insurance or annuity beneficiaries are still living. Recently, the New York Department of Financial Services ordered life insurance companies to search the DMF for names of policyholders to help ensure that beneficiaries unaware of the policy would be paid.
Additionally, according to the NTIS, the DMF is used to prevent identity fraud by financial services providers, government entities and fraud prevention services. By comparing the personal information supplied by an applicant against the information provided in the DMF, these institutions can ensure that applicants for government services or credit cards, for example, are not fraudulently using the personal information of a deceased individual.
Finally, professional and amateur genealogists use data from the DMF to create family trees and study family health histories. According to the Records Preservation and Access Committee, a coalition of various genealogical societies, genealogists must have access to the Social Security numbers of decedents to make certain that they have identified the correct decedent in their research. Particularly when genealogical research involves locating information about a decedent with a common name, accessing death records connected to a Social Security number is necessary for accurate research.
Improper Uses of the DMF: Identity Theft and Incorrect Death Reporting
Because the DMF includes a decedent’s full Social Security number, its role in facilitating identity theft has become an issue of increasing concern to the SSA, Congress, and consumer advocacy groups. Witnesses in a Congressional hearing on the DMF held in February reported that identity thieves are using the personal information of deceased children listed in the DMF to file false tax returns by listing the child as a dependent.
CNN Money reports that identity thieves use the personal information of over two million deceased Americans per year for purposes of opening bank and credit card accounts. Although the number of these identity thefts resulting from the use of DMF data specifically has not yet been studied, the potential for abuse by users of the DMF has contributed to the current and proposed restrictions to DMF data accessibility.
