Payments to the more than 800,000 doctors in the Medicare program varied widely with the top 25 highest paid doctors receiving between $21 million and $6.5 million. A dozen of the top 25 highest paid doctors were ophthalmologists.
Medicare officials would not discuss specific doctors, Aaron Albright, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said by phone. He didn’t immediately answer other questions about the data and Medicare’s use of it.
The spending in opthalmology is being driven, in part, by new medicines administered in doctors’ offices to treat macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the elderly.
Shining Light
Also included were payments to laboratories, group practices, ambulance services, and mobile x-ray providers. Multiple entities with Quest Diagnostics in their names collected a total of $669 million from Medicare, and listings for Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings totaled $717 million. The data generally are totaled by location, not by parent company, so it’s not possible to be certain that all those with a common name are owned by the same company.
California and Florida received the largest payments with each getting more than $7 billion from Medicare followed by Texas and New York, with $5 billion a piece.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is hoping that by releasing the data it can help cut waste from the Medicare system and improve cost-effectiveness, Jonathan Blum, deputy administrator for the Medicare agency, said last week in a blog post on the decision.
“Data like these can shine a light on how care is delivered in the Medicare program,” Blum said. ’’Businesses and consumers alike can use these data to drive decision-making and reward quality, cost-effective care.’’
The move has been welcomed by health research firms and consumer groups who’ve been looking for insight into how Medicare spends its money.
Senior Politics