This week’s question concerns a court ruling in favor of a consumer group that won a suit to allow disclosure of data about doctors from the Medicare claims database. The data can be used to determine how a doctor makes crucial decisions on tests and procedures, as well as which doctors fail to order prudent preventive tests, and which ones order unnecessary hospitalizations. Doctors worry that the files do not account for the severity of the cases and that they might show a higher-than-average number of patient deaths for a particular doctor, even though that doctor may have had patients with more serious illnesses.
What do you think?
Should patients have unlimited access to data on their doctors?
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