Compare your own practice patterns to the national average. Here ’s how.

In an era of increasing transparency in medicine, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has been publishing data annually on payments to individual physicians since 2014. The database, officially called the Medicare Provider Utilization and Payment Data: Physician and Other Supplier Public Use File, has been a window (albeit a cracked and opaque window) into the practice patterns and reimbursement of individual physicians. It includes most payments for services covered under Medicare. For each physician and billing code, the database provides the number of services provided and the total amount of money reimbursed for that particular service. You can download the dataset directly from the CMS website. However, the full dataset is a bit unwieldy. You can also use CMS’s interactive dataset to easily filter the data by different variables, and download a subset of the database. In addition, many websites, including the Wall Street Journal, and ProPublica, have created searchable databases where you can look up Medicare reimbursements for your doctor or any other physician. The reception to the publication of the physician database has been mostly positive, and I anticipate that CMS will continue publishing this data on an annual basis. There are several questions that can be answered using the database. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Policy Medicare Primary Care Public Health & Source Type: blogs