CMS Releases 2013 Medicare Payment Data for Hospitals and Physicians

  Yesterday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the release of utilization and payment data for both Medicare hospital services (inpatient and outpatient) and for physicians and suppliers. This is the third year the hospital data was released and the second year that the physician and supplier data was released. Indeed, the big troves of healthcare data keep coming. On April 30, CMS published information on 2013 Medicare Part D payments. At the end of this month, on June 30, CMS is scheduled to release the first full year of pharmaceutical and medical device transfers of value made to physicians and teaching hospitals as part of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act.  “Data transparency facilitates a vibrant health data ecosystem, promotes innovation, and leads to better informed and more engaged health care consumers,” said Niall Brennan, CMS chief data officer and director of the Office of Enterprise and Data Analytics in the accompanying press release. “CMS will continue to release the hospital and physician data on an annual basis so we can enable smarter decision making about care that is delivered in the health care system.”  Physician and Supplier Payment Data The physician and supplier payment data (available here) consists of information on services and procedures provided to patients for over 950,000 providers who received $90 billion in Medicare payments. CMS notes that the da...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs