Video: How to use national database to evaluate your doctor’s Medicare billing, treament patterns #hcr #doctors #costs

More from ProPublica: Medicare recently released, for the first time, details on 2012 payments to individual doctors and other health professionals serving the 46 million seniors and disabled in its Part B program. Part B covers services as varied as office visits, ambulance mileage, lab tests, and the doctor’s fee for open-heart surgery. Use this …

Investigative health reporting lives: Milking Medicare

The latest in health data reporting  from ProPublica: Medicare paid for more than 200 million office visits for established patients in 2012. Overall, health professionals classified only 4 percent as complex enough to command the most expensive rates. But 1,800 providers billed at the top level at least 90 percent of the time, a ProPublica analysis …

Your tax dollars at work: How much Medicare pays your doctor

For the first time -- with a little legal prodding-- Medicare has released information on how much it pays individual doctors. The New York Times already has a searchable database. Check it out. A tiny fraction of the 880,000 doctors and other health care providers who take Medicare accounted for nearly a quarter of the roughly …