Doctor Data Made To Order

Recently, Health and Human Services (HHS) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a request for public comment on how they should handle the reversal of an injunction that prevented them from revealing specific information about how doctors perform.

The mere request by the federal government for feedback on how best to use their new capacity to leverage Big Data to improve the healthcare system is a breath of fresh air. It is a welcome change from Snowden/NSA news and is a welcome indication that somewhere in the Federal Government there exists someone who understands technology policy well enough to not have “Aim gun at own toes” on their todo list. So we should all enjoy that for a moment.

In more “reasonableness from where I was not expecting it” news, it turns out that the American Medical Association chose not to continue to fight for the doctor data gag order, from the RFC: