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Karen Perry
CMS announced that it will soon give the private sector access to troves of Medicare data, MedCity News reports.
CMS acting Administrator Andy Slavitt made the announcement at Health Datapalooza, an event promoting transparent and accessible health care data (Versel, MedCity News, 6/3).
The move marks a change from CMS' longtime policy of barring private-sector researchers from using CMS data for commercial reasons (Versel, MedCity News, 6/3).
In a statement, Niall Brennan, chief data officer at CMS and director of the agency's Office of Enterprise and Data Analytics, said, "Historically, CMS has prohibited researchers from accessing detailed CMS data if they intended to use it to develop products or tools to sell" (Miliard, Healthcare IT News, 6/2).
Slavitt said the decision to open up the data to the private sector aims to "shak[e] up health care innovation and se[t] a new standard for data transparency" (Walsh, Clinical Innovation & Technology, 6/2). Further, the policy change aims to spur the development of new technologies, such as predictive modeling tools (Healthcare IT News, 6/2).
Under the new policy, set to take effect in September, data will be accessible through CMS' Virtual Research Data Center, which includes Medicare fee-for-service claims data (Kalish, Health Data Management, 6/2).
Researchers will be vetted before they are given access (Mazmanian, FCW, 6/2).
According to Health Data Management, researchers will be able to analyze the data in a "secure CMS environment." Specifically, CMS will bar researchers from removing patient-level information from the database. Instead, they will be able to download aggregated, privacy-protected reports.
While the data will be de-identified to protect patient identities, health care providers will be identifiable, according to CMS (Health Data Management, 6/2).
According to Slavitt, researchers and entrepreneurs also will be able to combine the CMS data with other data sources (FCW, 6/2).
In a release, the Healthcare Leadership Council lauded CMS' announcement as a "critical step" toward transforming the U.S. health care system.
Council President Mary Grealy said, "Our ability to build a[n] ... evidence-based, innovative health care system hinges on information," adding, "By making this data accessible to the private sector, CMS is making it possible for this process to accelerate" (Healthcare Leadership Council release, 6/2).
Meanwhile, Slavitt also announced that CMS will begin sharing data on a quarterly basis, rather than annually.
In addition, all data submitted to CMS will have to be in a machine-readable format to help drive consumer engagement (Health Data Management, 6/2).
It was a pleasure to work with you, as you and your team made this process a more pleasant experience for our team and the participants.
I just want to tell you that I value people relations more than money. I remember how you were friendly and helpful not going against policies and contractual obligations at the same time, not using your power to make us feel stupid and small. It was a very rare and big experience for me. Really. I will always remember this.
The Usability People are all individuals that you can become friends with very easily. They have a lot of different interests and are a pleasure to work with. I was writing a PRD/MRD for a billing solution and worked with The Usability People in defining the user interface. They are receptive to ideas and are able to mold the user interface from an end-user's perspective. I really liked the idea of putting end-user photograph & short biography around the office to help understand the users