Secretary Burwell Addresses Open Payments: The Data Wasn’t Perfect, But Some Was Better Than None

The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Sylvia Burwell, yesterday held a press conference on health care policy.  During the session, Burwell took time away from mostly Ebola-related questions for an Open Payments and transparency inquiry.

In her answer, Burwell notes that the department made the decision that it was better to get out a large portion of the information in order to “continue on this path on transparency.” She noted that “[t]he transparency path, because it’s new to everyone, it’s going to take us time to get there. We need to continue to evolve.”

Burwell also stated that transparency is an essential part of the drive towards “delivery system reform.” 

View the press conference here (Open Payments question at 20:30)

Q: I’m Jim Landers with the Dallas Morning News. I had a question about the transparency initiatives of the department. You’ve just put out an Open Payments system for the links between doctors and pharmaceuticals and medical device companies. You’ve had on the web for some time now Medicare inpatient and physician charges. There have been problems with the Open Payments system on the drugs and device links in the last week, but as far as the other ones go, the hospital systems say that charge masters really aren’t relevant to anything that’s actually paid in the hospital system, so it’s not really a good indication of what those prices are. What are you doing to strengthen the transparency that CMS is providing the public about these things?

SEC. BURWELL:

So continue to work and respond to comments. As you mentioned, when we put the first set of information out, one of the things that we heard was making sure that the information has context. And so when we did the most recent release, tried to provide more context both in terms of the release and anything about that.

I think the issue of transparency, when we think about where we were four years ago with regard to the question of transparency – and it goes back to our Consumer Report(s) question a little bit – the issue of what kind of transparency people have even about benefits in their plans, and the transparency that people have now that they know that – what a qualified health plan is and what those benefits are, and those being clearly stated. Across the board in the health care space – and whether it’s around the provider information or around the consumer information – we are trying to move on all fronts. It’s also related to electronic medical records in terms of the transparency that an individual can actually have about their own health care.

And so with regard to what are we doing– we’re working, actually, on all fronts in terms of trying to move the information forward so that both consumers and providers have information that they can make decisions about, and that we create a transparent marketplace where decisions are made.

Can we improve it? Should we improve it? Yes. When we hear the feedback on this most recent elements of open enrollment, we want to do that.

One of the decisions that we had to make, and I had to make the decision, is the information wasn’t perfect in the most recent rollout. There was data that was not as clean, and so we had to present some of the information, couldn’t present exactly all, but made a decision that it was better to get out a large portion of the information so that we can continue on this path on transparency.

The transparency path, because it’s new to everyone, it’s going to take us time to get there. We need to continue to evolve. But I think we think it’s an essential part, coming back to a point I just raised, which is the importance of information to decision-making to getting to a place where, quality and affordability, we drive towards that. And that is about delivery system reform.