Medicare should combine billing data from its prescription drug program with information collected when Medicare users submit claims for hospital and doctor visits, says the head of CMS. Integrating this information in a huge database could detect potential safety problems with drugs. While the FDA currently assesses drugs’ safety problems in clinical trials with hundreds to thousands of patients, such a database could assess affects on millions of patients
So far, the FDA is not enthusiastic about the plan proposed by Mark McClellan, current head of the CMS, and former head of the Food and Drug Administration.
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