Effective March 18, Medicare payments to individual physicians may be disclosed in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The policy was announced in a notice by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in the Federal Register on Jan. 17. Disclosure of Medicare payment information that could identify individual physicians was not permitted under the previous policy set by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (now the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS).
Under the new policy, CMS will decide on a case-by-case basis whether Exemption 6 of FOIA applies to a given request for information on Medicare payments to individual physicians. Exemption 6 of FOIA allows the government to withhold information about individuals in “personnel and similar files” when such disclosure would “constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” CMS offered little guidance on when FOIA requests for Medicare payments to physicians would be granted and when Exemption 6 would prevent the disclosure of such information. “As the outcome of the balancing test will depend on the circumstances, the outcomes of these analyses may vary depending on the facts of each case,” the agency stated in the Federal Register notice. CMS emphasized that the agency is committed to protecting the privacy of Medicare beneficiaries, while also working toward making Medicare data more transparent and accessible.
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