Medicare officials on Dec. 30 launched a new online tool that allows consumers to locate physicians in their communities and get information about their specialties, degrees, and other training.
The new online tool is called Physician Compare. It is modeled after the Hospital Compare Web site, which allows consumers to compare hospitals based on quality data and patient evaluations. Currently, the Physician Compare Web site contains mostly practice information. However, it does let consumers know if the practice reported quality data to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under the Physician Quality Reporting System, a voluntary program for reporting quality metrics on Medicare patients. More than 200,000 physicians and other health care providers reported data to the CMS under the voluntary system in 2009.
"The new Physician Compare tool begins to fill an important gap in our online tools by providing more information about physicians and other health care workers," Dr. Donald Berwick, CMS administrator, said in a statement. "This helps to pave the way for consumers" to have information about physicians as they do for nursing homes, home health agencies, and health and drug plans, Dr. Berwick noted.
Later this year, officials at the CMS plan to add information to Physician Compare about whether doctors are participating in the voluntary electronic prescribing program. Under the Affordable Care Act, the CMS is required to expand the Web site to include information on quality of care and patient experience data by 2013.