CMS Administrator McClellan Proposes Using Medicare Drug Benefit Data To Track Medication Safety, Efficacy

According to the LA Times,

Medicare head Mark McClellan, a doctor and an economist who once ranthe FDA, has proposed a Medicare-based system to track the safety andeffectiveness of medications.

McClellan proposes taking billing data from the prescriptionprogram, which will begin in January, and combining it with healthcareinformation already collected when Medicare users submit claims forhospital and doctors’ care. By cross-referencing the information, acomputer system could spot signs of trouble.

Patients’ personal information would be protected, but the datapool would be so large that problems could be much easier to detectthan they are now, he said.

Just how big will that government data base get, anyway?