The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services today released, for the first time, data detailing about $77 billion in payments to more than 880,000 healthcare professionals under its Medicare Part B Fee-For-Service program.
"We've taken a huge step today in making the Medicare program more transparent to the public and researchers," Jonathan Blum, CMS principal deputy administrator, said in a telephone news conference. "For too long this information was not available. Medicare is funded with taxpayer dollars and the public has a right to know this information. This data release can help reduce fraud and waste in the system.
"We want the public, press, and researchers to mine the data to help us find outliers, and identify spending that doesn't make sense or appears to be wasteful or fraudulent," he said.
Almost 4000 physicians were paid more than $1 million each in 2012 by Medicare, and the average payment per physician was $77,000 for that year, according to multiple media reports.
Medicare paid 344 physicians $3 million or more, and 1 Florida ophthalmologist was paid $21 million in 2012, according to an analysis of the database. Oncologists specializing in blood work and radiation each averaged more than $360,000 in annual payments.
In the $3 million-plus group, 151 ophthalmologists accounted for nearly $658 million in Medicare payments, according to an analysis by the Associated Press.
Ophthalmologists and oncologists received the highest payments because both professions use very expensive drug therapies as part of their practice, Blum said.
Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen, whose relationship with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) made headlines last year after it was disclosed that he used the physician's personal jet for vacation trips, was paid $20.8 million.
About 1 in 4 of the top-paid physicians practice in Florida. Rounding out the top 5 states were California, with 38 physicians in the top group; New Jersey, with 27; Texas, with 23; and New York, with 18.
CMS is looking at releasing data from previous years and plans to release updated hospital data within 8 weeks, Blum said.
"There is a common notion that some parts of the country bill much more for services," he said. "We see a more varied pattern than that. It isn't as simple as saying that Florida always spends more and Washington state spends less. We've found pockets of high spending in every state that would be either justified or wasteful."
Blum alerted the public to use caution in interpreting the data and not "jump to conclusions" about what drives high utilization rates.
The American Medical Association (AMA), which has long opposed release of the Medicare database, said the files may contain inaccurate information and can mislead the public.
"We believe that the broad data dump...has significant shortcomings regarding the accuracy and value of the medical services rendered by physicians," AMA President Ardis Dee Hoven, MD, said in a statement. "Releasing the data without context will likely lead to inaccuracies, misinterpretations, false conclusions and other unintended consequences."
The AMA and other leading medical groups had asked the government to allow individual physicians to review their information before its release. The group warns that the data may contain errors and does not include explicit information about quality of care.
"Medicare and other payers pay fixed prices for services based on fee schedules; therefore the amount paid to physicians is generally far less than what was charged and is not an accurate portrayal of payment," the AMA said in a statement.
The federal government proposed a similar plan in the 1970s to reveal data about individual physicians, but a federal judge said it violated a privacy law and issued a permanent injunction. In May 2013, another federal judge lifted the injunction over the objections of the AMA and other medical groups.
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Cite this: Medicare Releases Individual Physician Payment Data - Medscape - Apr 09, 2014.
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