Building on their work to make Medicare cost and quality data more transparent, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden from Oregon and Senior Finance Committee Member Chuck Grassley from Iowa are asking providers, patients, advocates, insurers, entrepreneurs, and others for new ideas on how to improve overall transparency in healthcare.
A letter was sent to a broad spectrum of healthcare stakeholders asking them for input on how to make healthcare data more useful and readily available. The Senators are asking the following:
- What data sources should be made more broadly available?
- How and in what form and for what purpose should this data be conveyed?
- What reforms would help reduce the unnecessary fragmentation of healthcare data?
- What reforms would improve the accessibility and usability of healthcare data for consumers, payers, and providers?
- What barriers stand in the way of stakeholders using existing data sources more effectively and what reforms should be made to overcome these barriers?
The letter asks that comments from stakeholders and the public be submitted by email to data@finance.senate.gov before August 12, 2014.All submitted comments are considered part of the public record
Previously Wyden and Grassley introduced the Medicare Data Access for Transparency and Accountability Act (Medicare DATA Act) to make the Medicare claims database available to the public online at no costs.
Since the introduction of the legislation, CMS has taken steps to open the payment database to the public. CMS has released data on more than 880,000 physicians and other providers. The data includes number of services, average submitted charges, average allowed amount, average Medicare payment, and a count of unique beneficiaries treated.