Interactive Tool Allows Easier Access Data on Physicians
April 23
Author: Niall Brennan, Acting Director, Offices of Enterprise Management
Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a new interactive search tool that can help consumers and other stakeholders navigate information about the types of medical services and procedures delivered by physicians and other healthcare professionals. Users can search for a provider by name, address, or National Provider Identifier (NPI). Once a user selects a provider, the tool returns information about the services the provider furnished to Medicare beneficiaries, including the number of services provided, the number of beneficiaries treated, and the average payment and charges for such services.
This new look-up tool makes it easier to use the large data set about physician information that CMS released on April 9, 2014 to look up specific providers. As with the data set, the look-up tool does not include information for cases where a provider administered a particular service 10 or fewer times to ensure the confidentiality of patients’ personal information. In addition, the information in the look-up tool only reflects the services provided to Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries and does not include measurements of the quality of care provided by a provider.
The release of this data set provides unprecedented access to information on the types of services physicians and other healthcare professionals deliver under the Medicare program. Within the first week of posting the data, more than 150,000 users downloaded the data, and the CMS website where the data is posted had nearly 250,000 page views.
This is the next step in our effort to provide useful, privacy-protected data to improve transparency as well as the quality and affordability of health care in this country.