The entire U.S. health-care system needs more transparency to best serve consumers. Until patients have easier access to information about costs and outcomes, important levers for controlling medical expenses will remain frustratingly out of reach.
That's why it is so disturbing that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shut down an online database of vital statistical information on the malpractice and disciplinary histories of doctors.
And it is especially disappointing that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a former Kansas governor, signed off on that move. It flies in the face of the Obama administration's goal of increasing patient access to crucial information about health care.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley is asking the right questions about the department's actions.
The agency closed down the public use file of the National Practitioner Data Bank after Kansas City Star reporter Alan Bavley used information there to bolster a story about a Johnson County neurosurgeon who remained in good standing with the Kansas Board of Healing Arts despite a trail of malpractice lawsuits.
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In a letter to the Health Research and Services Administration, Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said the intent of the legislation creating the public use file was that the "data be public as long as it does not identify particular health-care entities or practitioners."
Physicians in the databank are identified by number rather than name. Bavley used information gleaned from other public records, including court documents, to connect the neurosurgeon to his databank record.
Before the story's publication, a federal official sent Bavley a letter holding out the possibility of financial penalties if The Star used information from the database.
"A journalist's shoe-leather reporting is no justification for such threats or for HRSA to shut down public access to information that Congress intended to be public," Grassley said.
Grassley's letter asked about reported plans to further "de-identify" information in the database, and whether those moves will be in keeping with Congress' intent in establishing the public use file. He requests records of communications between HRSA officials and representatives for Robert Tenny, the neurosurgeon who was the subject of The Star's report. He also wants to know the timeline for getting the public use file up and running.
Journalism organizations and public-interest groups have protested removal of the file, calling it a valuable tool for tracking whether states and the medical profession are doing enough to weed bad doctors from the ranks.
"More transparency serves the public interest," Grassley wrote.
He's exactly right. Sebelius and the Obama administration should not be moving in the opposite direction.
