CMS to Disclose Individual Physician Payment Data

CMS to Disclose Individual Physician Payment Data  

On April 2, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced its plans to release data on or after April 9 to the public on Medicare payments to physicians.  The data will list procedures performed by 880,000 individual physicians, along with how much they charged and how much Medicare reimbursed the physicians in 2012.  Although CMS will not release personally identifiable information about patients, the data will be organized by physicians’ National Provider Identifier, Health Care Common Procedure Coding System code, and place of service.  CMS indicated in a letter that it weighed the privacy interest of physicians against the public’s interest in shedding light on government activity and operations, and determined that the public’s interest outweighs the physicians’ privacy interests. CMS also indicated in a blog post that these data will allow a wide range of analyses that compare 6,000 different types of services and procedures provided and will allow consumers to compare the services provided and payments received by individual health care providers.  The American College of Surgeons will monitor the impact of this data release and will analyze any consequences for surgeons.