OBJECTIVES:  Medicare and commercial insurance plans provide limited long-term care (LTC) coverage, resulting in potential underestimation of total care costs when using insurance claims. The objective of this study was to test a method using place-of-services codes (POS) to identify and categorize LTC transitions for a cohort of dementia patients. METHODS: Analyses used de-identified administrative claims (2011 to 2015) from the OptumLabs^TM Data Warehouse, a database which includes retrospective administrative claims data on more than 150M U.S. commercially-insured and Medicare Advantage enrollees. Using diagnosis codes and prescription claims, a dementia cohort was created with 36 months continuous coverage pre and 6 months post diagnosis. Hospice patients were excluded. POS codes were used to identify LTC use for nursing (31, 32, 33, 54), intermediate-care (55, 56, 61) and assisted-living (13) facilities. Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes (99304-99310, 99315-99318, 99324-99340) also indicated LTC use. Each month for each individual was coded as LTC or community (1/0). Hospitalization during any <3-month LTC-stay gap was coded an LTC month. To categorize community-LTC transitions, a 12-month rolling average of LTC-months was calculated. Months with an average >=0.5, received an LTC code. Based on monthly indicators, individuals were categorized into six care-transition groups: (1) Continuously community; (2) Community to LTC; (3) Continuously LTC; (4) LTC to community; (5) Community to mixed months of LTC; (6) LTC to mixed months of community. RESULTS:  Out of 41,179 dementia cohort beneficiaries, 16,862 (41%) had a LTC use. Of those, 10,641 (63.1%) were categorized as continuously community; 3,754 (22.3%) transitioned, community to LTC; 1,671 (9.9%) were continuously LTC; 53 (0.3%) transitioned LTC to community; 499 (3.0%) transitioned community to mixed LTC; and 244 (1.4%) transitioned LTC to mixed community. CONCLUSIONS: Use of POS and CPT codes related to claims is a viable method to identify LTC use and care transitions using claims data.