Data Stream
Open Payments Data: Round 2!
Extreme Markup: Hospital Edition
The sun keeps shining on the Open Payments database. On June 30, the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the second year
of data about payments physicians and teaching hospitals received from
drug and device companies in 2014.
Some hospitals are charging patients more than 10 times what Medicare
will reimburse them for, according to an analysis of Medicare cost reports of
4,483 Medicare-certified hospitals. The authors identified the 50 U.S. hospitals with the greatest charge-to-cost ratios – calculated by dividing each
hospital’s total gr