Analyzing Annals: The Medicare Data Release Conundrum

Analyzing Annals: The Medicare Data Release Conundrum

These papers (Medicare and Physician Payment Data: Is This Transparency? and The Medicare Data Release Conundrum) discuss the recently released Medicare payment data, which showed individual physician's payments from Medicare.

Use these papers to:

  • How is Medicare designed? What do the different parts (A-D) pay for? Use www.cms.gov as a resource about Medicare.
  • Interpret the report on a specific physician. What information can be drawn from this publicly available payment data?
  • Is the release of information like this useful? To whom? Will it enhance patient care? Save money?
  • What are the limitations of this data released by Medicare? How might these limitations lead to erroneous conclusions about a physician's practice or behavior?

Back to September 2014 Issue of IMpact

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