Bill Would Reveal More about Medicare Payments

WASHINGTON — Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., introduced
legislation April 14 that would make summary-level Medicare data
publicly available to allow better oversight of the program. Even
though the government has stepped up fraud detection and
enforcement, Durbin said, catching false or inflated claims is a
challenge since Medicare pays 4.5 million claims per work day.

His Medicare Spending Transparency Act would require CMS to
publish information annually about how and what Medicare is paying
to individual providers, including amount paid, number of unique
patients seen, total number of patient visits and a summary of the
services provided. The bill would also lift the restriction on
releasing a fraudulent provider’s name. All patient identifying
information would be protected.