The app uses quantitative and qualitative data from four ProPublica databases.
1. Dollars for Docs, which tracks pharmaceutical companies’ payments to healthcare providers for speaking, consulting and other services.
2. Prescriber Checkup, which compares which drugs physicians write prescriptions for.
3. Treatment Tracker, which showcases how much physicians charge Medicare for office visits and procedures.
4. Surgeon Scorecard, which identifies surgeons’ complication rates for eight common elective procedures.
Vital Signs focuses on unique findings from the databases to identify physicians that are outliers compared to their peers.
“ProPublica’s healthcare reporting offers countless opportunities to help patients manage the quality of their care, to help institutions identify and address problems with providers and to reward those who provide high-quality care,” said Celeste LeCompte, director of business development at ProPublica.
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