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.