March 12, 2010

Releasing Medicare Claims Data To Support Quality Improvement Initiatives: Legal Barriers and Opportunities

Written by Jane Hyatt Thorpe, Erica Pereira, and Sara Rosenbaum, Releasing Medicare Claims Data To Support Quality Improvement Initiatives: Legal Barriers and Opportunities provides insight and evidence on the improvement of health care quality through the ability for Medicare claims to be released. The authors believe that these measures of private data could facilitate more accurate measurement of providers? performance and better public reports to empower consumer and spur improvements in quality. There are many legal barriers that prevent the release of Medicare Claims data or any other data that would improve health care quality, for these legal barriers are discussed in this report. Also discussed in this report is the vast amount of opportunities that would result from legalizing the release of these types of documents.