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ONC head Karen DeSalvo proposes dissolving the agency’s workgroups and forming four new ones in order to reduce redundancy and create a “less siloed” approach. The proposed workgroups would focus on (a) health IT strategic planning; (b) advanced health models and Meaningful Use; (c) health IT implementation, usability, and safety; and (d) interoperability and health information exchange.
Reader Comments
From Jeff: “Re: Medicare reimbursement data. If you use the New York Times tool, it becomes very, very easy to look up your local docs and their payouts.” CMS released Medicare payment data on Wednesday on 880,000 providers who collectively received $77 billion in Medicare payments in 2012. I struggled to manipulate the data using Excel, but it took me just seconds to look up details on all my doctors (and a few doctor friends) using the Times tool. While I understand why doctors aren’t happy that the world can now see much of our tax dollars ended up in their individual bank accounts, the potential analytics value of the data is pretty exciting.
From Lincoln: “Re: Medicare reimbursement data. What’s your take, Mr. H?” The government didn’t release the data until forced, so chalk up one for the Freedom of Information Act and the responsible publications that pressed the issue. I agree with Inga that the information is interesting, but I think it will raise more questions than it answers. The public doesn’t realize how screwed up Medicare payments are, so the nuances of payments made to groups, doctors being paid directly for administering drugs, and other quirks are going to sail right over their heads. CMS isn’t known for outstanding customer service, so who’s going to answer that deluge of questions about specific examples that are so easy to find? Probably the high-earning providers themselves, who are getting calls from their local papers looking for a hot story. What will they say about Medicare rules allow a single specialist to crank out enough high-paying procedures to earn many millions vs. primary care guys barely making a living – it’s better than fraud, but brings up the whole value question that CMS encourages by paying heavily for procedure medicine. I’m also annoyed at the CMS insinuation that citizens should help them fight fraud – why don’t some of their bureaucrats who understand the rules and are paid to enforce them look at the information themselves and realize that paying some doctor $20 million in a single year might be cause for concern instead of waiting for amateur SAS jockeys to point that out? Our “pay and chase” system is great for providers and great for hiding government inefficiency that would manifest itself as infinitely delayed payments, but it’s not so great for taxpayers. Patients don’t even know what is being billed and paid on their behalf …read more
