CMS releases 2nd annual prescription drug cost information

The Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services (CMS) has issued 2^nd annual prescription drug cost information privacy-protected data that the program covered under the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Program in the year of 2014.

The agency pointed out that the provision of the data is 2^nd annual prescription drug cost information. The de-identified information indicates which prescription drugs were prescribed to Medicare Part D enrollees by physicians and other healthcare experts.

“With this information release, sufferers, researchers and providers can access worthy data about the Medicare prescription drug program,” stated Niall Brennan, CMS Chief Data Officer. “The release merges a series of actions the Administration is taking to make better the transparency around government data, involving the cost of prescription drugs.”

The 2014 data set consists of information from over one million healthcare providers who collectively prescribed almost $121 billion in prescription drugs that were covered under the Medicare Part D program. This depicts a 17% increase as compared to the 2013 data set.

The most recent information set describes the particular medications prescribed for 38 million Medicare Part D enrollees, who represent about 70% of all Medicare beneficiaries. The data set was made using information submitted by Medicare Advantage Prescription drug policies and stand-alone Prescription Drug Plans.

CMS considers that, with 2 years of data, “it’ll now be possible to conduct analyses of trends from the time period of 2013 to 2014 as well as to conduct a broad array of analyses that compare prescribing habits for particular contributors, brand versus generic drug prescribing rates, and state- and local-level differences in drug utilization and prices.”

The 2014 data also involves latest aggregated data on opioids, antibiotics, antipsychotics, and high-risk medications among the elderly. Additionally, a prescriber enrollment status field has been added to demonstrate whether the prescriber is enrolled, not enrolled or selected out of the Medicare program.

The presence of the 2014 Medicare Part D prescription drug data is the recent in a series of data releases on services and processes provided to Medicare beneficiaries.