CMS Announces Plan for More Transparency in Doctor Billings
On April 2, 2014, CMS's Principal Deputy Administrator Jonathan Blum announced it would release information about 880,000 doctor billings.
In letters to the American Medical Association and Florida Medical Association, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced their intent to take a major step forward in making the health care system more transparent and accountable. CMS is planning to provide the public unprecedented access to information about the number and type of health care services that individual physicians and certain other health care professionals delivered in 2012, and the amount Medicare paid them for those services. The release of data is expected after April 9, 2014.
The data contains information on more than 880,000 health care professionals in all 50 states who collectively received $77 billion in payments in 2012 for services delivered to beneficiaries under the Medicare Part B Fee-For-Service program. With this data, it will be possible to conduct a wide range of analyses that compare 6,000 different types of services and procedures provided, as well as payments received by individual health care providers.