CMS Releases New Prescription Drug Cost Data

On August 18, 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released new prescription drug data, physician-level data on prescriptions for drugs paid for by Medicare Part D in 2014. This new data set “describes the specific medications prescribed for 38 million Medicare Part D enrollees, who represent about 70 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries.” This is the second annual release of the data. According to Niall Brennan, CMS Chief Data Officer, “With this data release, patients, researchers and providers can access valuable information about the Medicare prescription drug program. Today’s release joins a series of actions the Administration is taking to improve transparency around government data, including the cost of prescription drugs.” The 2014 data set contains information from over one million distinct health care providers who collectively prescribed roughly $121 billion in prescription drugs that were paid for under the Medicare Part D program, a seventeen percent increase from the 2013 data set numbers. This falls more or less in line with a March 2016 Health and Human Services (HHS) report, which provided a detailed analysis of prescription drug spending trends and noted that the overall prescription drug spending in the United States rose by 12.6 percent from 2013 to 2014. In 2014, Lisinopril, Levothyroxine Sodium, and Amlodipine Besylate were the three drugs with the highest claim count. Rounding out that top ten list were Hydrocod...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs