Here are four key notes:
1. More than 986,000 clinicians were included in the data, receiving around $91 billion in Medicare payments in 2014. The previous year, there were 950,000 clinicians included in the data-dump, receiving around $90 billion.
2. The most recent data includes a “Medicare standardized payment amount” removing geographic differences in reimbursement for individual services. The difference was based on local wages and input prices.
3. The American Medical Association has been critical of the federal government’s decision to publish individual physician payment data in the past. Top criticisms include: the payments don’t reflect the quality of care and data could be misinterpreted.
4. CMS categorized the data in an interactive dataset as well as a tab delimited file format with summary tables that include aggregated information by physician and other supplier as well as aggregated information by state and HCPCS code.
https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Medicare-Provider-Charge-Data/Physician-and-Other-Supplier2014.html
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