Merrill Goozner has an excellent blog on the medical industry. Here's his take on the cardiac stent "mill" in Baltimore, and how it has come to light and reached some measure of accountability.
He writes on his "Gooznews" blog:
... let us point out a few interesting aspects of this still evolving story.
First, it was officials with access to patient billing records at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services who launched the investigation. Yet we read this morning in the Washington Post a story by Kaiser Health News about pushback from the American Civil Liberties Union and others against the creation of comprehensive electronic database containing records from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, which covers millions of federal workers. One of the purposes of such a database would be to conduct investigations like the one carried out by CMS.
Please see full publication below for more information.