Open Medicare Data Helps Indiana University Researchers Uncover Potential Hidden Costs of Health Care
An interdisciplinary team of
Their findings, published
For example, a
"Let's be clear here -- we should not find such an association," said
It's important to note that an association shows that two variables appear to change at the same time, whereas causality implies that one variable causes another variable to change. This study does not prove causality, which the researchers said would be difficult to do with secondary data.
"We found that the association was still there after taking into account the size of the practice, its location and drug prescribing levels," she said.
Pestilli said the large Medicare data sets that the researchers used were made openly available as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
"Our research capitalized on such openly shared data," Pestilli said. "We demonstrate the value of open data in providing society with critical insights on hidden costs that can be addressed at the policy level."
But
"As a society, we have had the potential for quantifying and qualifying the influence of the industry on our medical costs," he said. "However, we have not done so. For example, we are just discovering the extent to which certain health care companies may be involved in the current opioid crisis in the
To help achieve this goal,
"We have energy-efficiency scorecards for appliances, cars and many consumer products,"
The researchers have several follow-up projects in progress, including one that aims to investigate how industry payments may drive future medical costs, which would bring them one step closer to establishing a potential causal relationship between payments and costs.
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