Wednesday, April 09, 2014

Moving toward Transparency

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will release a database today that shows how many visits and procedures individual health professionals billed Medicare for in 2012, and how much they were paid. ProPublica has been studying the medical profession for quite a while and has also provided various databases that can be useful in making decisions about your doctors.  

While it is too soon to truly evaluate the Medicare database, the NY Times has found that about 2 percent of doctors account for about $15 billion in Medicare payments, roughly a quarter of the total. Only a quarter of the doctors are responsible for three-quarters of the spending. How successful in treating patients these doctors have been is another matter. But it's a start.

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