Dive Brief:
- CMS has announced that it plans to give the public an unprecedented level of access to Medicare physician payment data.
- The data involves information on more than 880,000 health care professionals across the country, who received a total of $77 billion in Medicare Part D fee-for-service payments in 2012.
- Last year, HHS and CMS also released hospital charge data on the 100 most common inpatient services and the 30 most common outpatient services.
Dive Insight:
The announcement regarding the data release was made in a blog post by CMS Principal Deputy Administrator Jonathan Blum. In the post, Blum called the data release "another major step forward in making our healthcare system more transparent and accountable." Blum envisions consumers using the data to compare services provided and payment received by individual medical providers. Given how overwhelming such data would appear to many consumers, I'm not sure they'll use the data the way he hopes, but it's certainly worth trying to make it open to the public.