Mapping Medicare Referrals
February 01, 2013
When viewing doctor profiles, some of you might have noticed a new tab called "Medicare Referrals". We've incorporated data from Medicare showing which doctors have referred Medicare patients to other doctors. The tab is divided into outbound referrals (whom the doctor has referred to) and inbound referrals (whom the doctor has accepted referrals from). This data gives viewers a sense of the other providers a doctor might consult.
The data only covers Medicare referrals in 2011, and only shows referrals between individual providers (not between, say, one doctor and a lab). We also show the volume of referrals associated with a relationship.
We have some ideas of how to make the data more useful. For example, it might be interesting to know which doctors are the ones that are most widely referred to. If you have other ideas of how to make this data useful, please let us know.