Medicare to allow use of data to help promote quality

Medicare announced that it will allow certain organizations to use its claim database. Very interesting. Organizations have been wanting to get at this data for decades, and the Wall Street Journal engaged in a lawsuit along a similar vein.

If this data were publicly available, we'd be happy to integrate it to help people find doctors. A very simple usage would be to help patients identify medical providers who have treated other patients with the same medical condition.

I had heard rumors of this earlier, and it's neat to see this announcement. A couple of questions immediately come to mind? When will this data become available? What are the eligibility requirements to use this data?