Wow, never thought I would see the day that an IT Periodical would speak to the costs of healthcare...
According to Mike Miliard, Managing Editor of Wired Magazine, he spoke about a presentation by Andy Grove, former Chairman and CEO of Intel corporation, speaking via Skype at the first annual "WIRED Health Conference: Living By Numbers," issued a call to arms to free healthcare data, making his case for radical price transparency in medicine.
This call to "Free the Data" was also a major theme at the HealthDataPalooza in DC earlier this year. Why the call to free health data? "The industry, "plays a gigantic game of Blind Man’s Bluff, keeping patients in the dark while asking them to make life-and-death decisions. The odds that they will make the best choice are negligible and largely depend on chance. Patients need to have data, including costs and their own medical histories, liberated and made freely available for thorough analysis."
Making the data public is not a new concept. On CMS's website, you will find a variety of "Compare Initiatives" that are intended to inform the public with quality data about caregivers, physicians, hospitals and other healthcare agencies. A part of the National Quality Strategy is to inform the consumer with quality data to enable informed choices about their health care.
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