Last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released its second annual physician Medicare payment data. This information is intended to offer the public more transparency to foster innovation in the health care system and better informed and more engaged health care consumers, according to CMS.
The data released consists of information on services and procedures provided to Medicare beneficiaries by physicians and other health care professionals. It also shows payment and submitted charges, or bills, for those services and procedures by provider. It allows for comparisons by physician, specialty, location, types of medical services and procedures delivered, Medicare payment and submitted charges. The new 2013 dataset has information for over 950,000 distinct health care providers who collectively received $90 billion in Medicare payments.
The North Carolina Medical Society (NCMS) encourages you to view your data – you can search by your last name here. CMS also has a fact sheet for your review. If you have any questions or notice some irregularities in your data, please contact Jennifer Gasperini, NCMS Director of Health Policy.