More Transparency

In one of the latest efforts to promote greater transparency in medicine, Medicare has begun making payments to doctors public information. A New York Times article reported that a small fraction of physicians accounted for nearly 25% of payments to physicians.¹ 

I am all for transparency. The New York Times article quoted the president of the American Medical Association saying that these data do not provide a window on quality.¹ 

That may be true, though the data may provide some information on levels of experience and hopefully will be supplemented by more and more detailed information on quality indicators. 

More importantly, these data may provide information on the few outliers whose practices are inconsistent with everyone else’s practices. It may be that those outliers are providing unusually intensive services or are somehow very efficiently caring for unusually large numbers of patients. But if there are fraudulent activities going on, I am hopeful that making these Medicare numbers public will help identify and root out whatever bad apples there may be.

The New York Times article provides an online interactive database of all 800,000 physicians, so that you can freely look up the payments you have been reported to have received (to make sure they are accurate, if you like) or to look up the payments that any other physician has been reported to have received. You can view it here: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/09/health/medicare-doctor-database.html. 

The amount of information available to us is extraordinary and continues to grow. Figuring out the best ways to use the data will be a challenge. This access has become second nature to us. I can no longer imagine what life would be like without the Internet.

Steven R. Feldman, MD, PhD

Chief Medical Editor

Dr. Feldman is with the Center for Dermatology Research and the Departments of Dermatology, Pathology and Public Health Sciences at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC. 

Reference

1. Abelson R, Cohen, S. Sliver of Medicare doctors get big share of payouts. New York Times. April 9, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/business/sliver-of-medicare-doctors-get-big-share-of-payouts.html. Accessed March 4, 2015.

In one of the latest efforts to promote greater transparency in medicine, Medicare has begun making payments to doctors public information. A New York Times article reported that a small fraction of physicians accounted for nearly 25% of payments to physicians.¹ 

I am all for transparency. The New York Times article quoted the president of the American Medical Association saying that these data do not provide a window on quality.¹ 

That may be true, though the data may provide some information on levels of experience and hopefully will be supplemented by more and more detailed information on quality indicators. 

More importantly, these data may provide information on the few outliers whose practices are inconsistent with everyone else’s practices. It may be that those outliers are providing unusually intensive services or are somehow very efficiently caring for unusually large numbers of patients. But if there are fraudulent activities going on, I am hopeful that making these Medicare numbers public will help identify and root out whatever bad apples there may be.

The New York Times article provides an online interactive database of all 800,000 physicians, so that you can freely look up the payments you have been reported to have received (to make sure they are accurate, if you like) or to look up the payments that any other physician has been reported to have received. You can view it here: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/09/health/medicare-doctor-database.html. 

The amount of information available to us is extraordinary and continues to grow. Figuring out the best ways to use the data will be a challenge. This access has become second nature to us. I can no longer imagine what life would be like without the Internet.

Steven R. Feldman, MD, PhD

Chief Medical Editor

Dr. Feldman is with the Center for Dermatology Research and the Departments of Dermatology, Pathology and Public Health Sciences at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC. 

Reference

1. Abelson R, Cohen, S. Sliver of Medicare doctors get big share of payouts. New York Times. April 9, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/business/sliver-of-medicare-doctors-get-big-share-of-payouts.html. Accessed March 4, 2015.