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WASHINGTON – The government wants you to analyze its data and come up with solutions to health system problems.
At Health Datapalooza IV, an annual conference dedicated to health data transparency, the Health and Human Services Department released vast amounts of data on electronic health record use and vendors, top outpatient procedures, and county-level data on Medicare expenditures and chronic conditions.
Alicia Ault/IMNG Medical Media
Kathleen Sebelius
"A more data driven and transparent health care marketplace can help consumers and their families make important decisions about their care," HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. "The administration is committed to making the health system more transparent and harnessing data to empower consumers."
When it comes to electronic health records (EHR), the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) made public a huge database of information on 146,000 physicians who have sought help on how to become meaningful users of EHRs from the ONC’s 62 Regional Extension Centers.
The extension centers were established largely to help primary care physicians, especially those who work in underserved communities, Mat Kendall, director of the ONC Office of Provider Adoption Support, said in an interview. There are about 310,000 primary care physicians in the United States; a little less than half are working with an extension center, he said.
The database includes a unique identification for each provider or practice, and lists practice type, specialty, the stage of meaningful use, EHR vendor, and whether the practice has had issues that vendor.
If the data were aggregated, physicians might be able to see how many of their colleagues have experienced similar challenges with a particular EHR or vendor. Or, physicians could tell how many of their peers had reached meaningful use via a particular EHR, said Mr. Kendall.
"Ultimately what we’re trying to do is facilitate a way for people linking together," he said.
Sharing the data on those 146,000 physicians’ experience could help more physicians get to meaningful use, Mr. Kendall said. "We’ve really been working hard to analyze the data ourselves to identify opportunities for improvement, as well as challenges," he said. Now, others will be able to sift through it and look for weak and strong points, he said.
Overall, as of the end of April, more than 291,000 physicians and other eligible professionals had received incentive payments from the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs. Physicians can earn up to $44,000 in bonus payments from Medicare by being meaningful users of EHRs, and up to $63,750 over 6 years from Medicaid.
Also at the meeting, HHS officials announced they were releasing data on hospital charges for 30 outpatient procedures, including clinic visits, echocardiograms, and endoscopies, following the release in May of charge data on the 100 most common inpatient procedures performed on Medicare patients.
"I know that those of you in this room can help us figure out ways to make that data come alive, for policy makers, for researchers, and consumers," said Ms. Sebelius.
Finally, the agency made public a database on Medicare spending and use and chronic conditions in beneficiaries, down to the county level. In a statement, HHS officials said that these databases will help researchers, data innovators, and the public better understand Medicare spending and service use.
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