{"id":42814,"date":"2014-04-15T10:34:15","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T14:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=voices&#038;p=42814"},"modified":"2014-04-15T15:14:29","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T19:14:29","slug":"cardiology-and-the-medicare-data-avalanche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2014\/04\/15\/cardiology-and-the-medicare-data-avalanche\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardiology and the Medicare Data Avalanche"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The avalanche of data released by Medicare on Wednesday was followed shortly by an outpouring of news reports. Here\u2019s a review of some of the more significant cardiology-related details that came out in these stories.<\/p>\n<p>Cardiology was the third in a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/exchange.mms.org\/owa\/redir.aspx?C=qfYEYKqJK060at-pREogUqyKBHJMLNFIV5Ea80zXG_LFki60KreocUEyTYS5wgyVrZMDa9U1-fU.&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.nytimes.com%2finteractive%2f2014%2f04%2f08%2fbusiness%2f100000002815309.mobile.html\" target=\"_blank\">New York Times list<\/a>\u00a0of total Medicare payments received by the highest-paid 2% of doctors. This 2% accounted for nearly one-fourth of total Medicare payments. There were 2,176 cardiologists in the top 2% group and they received more than 1.6 billion dollars from Medicare. Ahead of cardiologists at the top of the list were ophthalmologists (2,995 providers who received more than $3.3 billion) and hematologists\/oncologists (1,831 providers who received more than $2 billion).<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/wp\/2014\/04\/09\/the-top-10-medicare-billers-explain-why-they-charged-121m-in-one-year\/\" target=\"_blank\">Washington Post\u2018s Wonkblog<\/a>\u00a0furthered the discussion by asking the top 10 Medicare billers to explain their charges.<\/p>\n<p>What are your thoughts on this recent data? Has there been a discussion between you, your colleagues and\/or patients about the information released to the public?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Harlan Krumholz discusses the Medicare data that was recently released to the public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[474],"class_list":["post-42814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-medicare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}