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May 22, 2008 The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a final rule to permit Medicare Part D claims data to be used for programmatic monitoring, research, public health, care coordination, quality improvement, population of personal health records, and other purposes. To address concerns raised in the rulemaking process, CMS balanced access to the data with protections for beneficiary privacy and commercially sensitive health plan data to safeguard public health and permit broader public knowledge about the operations of Medicare's Part D program. Under the final rule, CMS may release the claims data to other federal government agencies, states, external researchers, and beneficiaries for their personal health records. Under the final rule, external researchers have access to the "minimum necessary data for research purposes subject to additional protections such as the encryption of beneficiary, prescriber, and pharmacy identifiers unless needed to link to another data set. In addition, external entities will not have access to plan identifiers or disaggregated drug cost data that breaks out drug ingredient cost or dispensing fees." Copies of the rule, a fact sheet, a side-by-side summary of the proposed and final rules, and a summary of the prescription drug event (PDE) data elements available to researchers may be found at: www.cms.hhs.gov/PrescriptionDrugCovGenIn/08_PartDData.asp AcademyHealth submitted comments on the proposed rule, and wrote a letter to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) urging the release of the final rule. These documents can be accessed at: Questions? Questions? Email us at coalition@academyhealth.org. |
