HHS to Disclose Physician Payment Data

On January 14, HHS announced it would begin responding to Freedom of Information Act requests for individual physician-payment data on a case-by-case basis. The agency will also begin making aggregate data sets regarding Medicare physician services available to the public. The new HHS policy follows last year’s federal court decision, which affirmed that physicians’ privacy concerns do not always outweigh the public’s interest in knowing how much Medicare is paying individual doctors.

This announcement is consistent with recent HHS policies on the transparency of Medicare data that resulted in the release of information on the average charges for the 100 most common inpatient services and 30 selected outpatient procedure. The new policy will take effect 60 days from the date of publication in the Federal Register.