MASSDEVICE ON CALL — White House officials announced that they plan to make public a rich reservoir of data Medicare payments unlike any publicized before, perhaps as early as next week.
The release will include payments made in 2012 to individual doctors, covering some 880,000 healthcare providers, according to the Wall Street Journal. The move is expected to help healthcare watchdogs curb fraud and examine usage trends.
Officials from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services called the release a major step forward for transparency, but the measure has been a source of serious concern for physicians’ groups, which attempted to block the release.
The data could cause "unwarranted bias against physicians that can destroy careers," American Medical Assn. president Ardis Dee Hoven told the Journal. The organization had asked to review the data prior to publication, but was rebuffed.
CMS maintained that the data would help shed light on trends in healthcare that could help uncover inconsistencies and areas for improvement. Previous disclosures have helped spur reports on wide disparities in hospital costs as well as other controversial reports.
News of the release was lauded by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who released a joint statement lauding the release of the data.
"Transparency draws in the public and invites analysis of policy and spending," Grassley said in prepared remarks. "More transparency has made a difference in accountability in the tax-exempt sector, and it does the same wherever it’s applied in health care. The public’s business ought to be public. I’m looking forward to the positive effects on accountability and spending from the new transparency in Medicare."
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