Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Max Baucus, D-Mont., have introduced legislation to improve the study of medical treatments, including the effectiveness and safety of drugs, by giving researchers at certain federal agencies and university-based and other research organizations highly controlled access to data on hospital, physician, and prescription drug benefits that are provided to Medicare beneficiaries.
The Medicare Data Access and Research Act would allow researchers to link data on hospital and physician services to prescription drug data to study drug safety and patterns of healthcare use among older adults and low-income, disabled, and vulnerable populations. The bill includes several provisions to ensure “that the strongest safeguards are in place to protect beneficiaries’ and providers’ privacy and confidentiality,” said Grassley. “This initiative is about improving the quality of health care by careful study of what is happening in the real world. Researchers could help us better understand why services that we know can help people maintain good health are not being used and to develop policies to promote their use, for example,” Grassley said.
