Medicare will provide complete data at the national level to a San Francisco-based for-profit start-up company with the goal of providing the most accurate physician information to patients so they can make the best decisions for their healthcare needs, according to an article from U.S. News & World Report.
The company, Amino, is just the second to achieve special Medicare "qualified entity" status, which gives full access to the complete range of Medicare data for physicians and other healthcare providers. Insurers had previously been able to purchase access to the Medicare claims database to help them create report cards that evaluate providers on quality. However, this is the first time a for-profit organization has been given total access to the data, according to U.S. News.
The partnership resulted from an effort to increase transparency in the healthcare sphere, according to the article. The information will be available on Amino.com for free, and the company ultimately wants to use the data to provide answers to a broad set of healthcare questions. Additionally, Amino aims for personalized results that match patients with doctors based on the number of patients with similar conditions that they've treated.
Big data is expected to play a huge role in the diagnosis and treatment of disease, FierceHealthIT previously reported. Insurance companies are already mining information in an attempt to use such data to customize the approach to different patients. And in March, a bill was introduced that would provide better transparency to Medicare claims data so it can be shared between entities and payers.
"We do have relationships with major insurers. We've purchased claims. We've traded services and analytics for claims. We've done a lot of work to assemble this de-identified data set," David Vivero, co-founder and CEO at Amino, told U.S. News. "We have a very long runway and very patient investors. Our goal is to get people the information they need right now."
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