The Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services has launched a public Web site that tracks how much it spends on Medicare patients in hospitals for the most treated illnesses and conditions.
It is one of the efforts by the Health and Human Services Department to open up and publish some of its cache of voluminous data for public view and analysis.
HHS detailed on April 7 several online programs it plans as part of the administration's Open Government directive to make government operations and performance more accessible to the public.
"HHS' vast stores of data are a remarkable national resource, which can be utilized to help citizens understand what we do and hold us accountable [and] help the public hold the private sector accountable," according to the HHS plan.
Availability of the data may also "spark public and private sector innovation and action," the plan said.
For instance, the beta release April 5 of the CMS site provides statistics from its Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) data based on medical claims the agency paid, their volume and by hospital in a dashboard or graphical format. The data covers information from inpatient discharges from January 2006 to December 2009 and will be updated monthly.
HHS said it will protect the confidentiality of individually identifiable information that may be contained in data sets that it releases to the public.
Another of HHS' flagship projects will be to release by the end of the year national, state, regional and potentially county-level data on Medicare prevalence of disease, quality and costs.
The data stream is part of its Community Health Data initiative, a public-private effort to help Americans understand healthcare performance in their local areas compared with others and to help spur improvements.
HHS is working with technology vendors, employers, providers and others to determine the best applications of the data, including interactive health maps, competitions and social networking games to educate consumers about health.
Among other planned online efforts, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is developing a performance measurement system and online site that demonstrates the status of its programs, such as monitoring its many grant awardees in advancing the adoption of electronic health records.
The initial version of its performance dashboard is expected before yearend.
HHS' Open Government plan also cited the importance of the emerging nationwide health information network (NHIN), a set of standards and services designed to secure the exchange of health information over the Internet, and its recently announced streamlined version, called NHIN Direct.
This simpler adaptation will make possible direct exchanges of information between providers, labs, pharmacies and patients.
HHS' Open Government plan is can be viewed here.
More information about the CMS dashboard is here.
