Obtaining Vital Status Information from the Social Security Administration for SEER Program Registries provide vital status information to the cancer registries participating in the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program. Periodically each of the 15 SEER registries will submit personal identifiers on cancer patients known to be alive at last follow-up in a format to be specified by SSA. The submitted files will be linked to the appropriate SSA files to determine vital status information which includes whether each patient is still alive or has died, or whether the information submitted for an individual patient was not sufficient to make a determination of vital status. A file containing information on vital status for patients from a SEER registry will then be returned to that registry by the SSA.
