The 10 Specialties with the Highest Medicare Part B Payments

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A new data set from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shows the agency paid about $90 billion to 950,000 providers for Medicare Part B Fee-For-Service patients in 2013. These 10 provider types had the highest average payments, on a per-provider basis.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Monday released a new set of data describing how much the agency paid out under the Medical Part B Fee-for-Service system in 2013. The information covers 950,000 distinct healthcare providers in all 50 states. In total, it shows they collected $90 billion in Medicare payments that year.

On a macro level, the data tell an important story about the overall cost of healthcare in the US. However, when the data are broken down, the numbers begin to paint a picture about the relative cost of treatment in various clinical specialties.

What follows is a list of the 10 specialties with the highest average per-provider payments in 2013. The list is ranked by allowed payments for medical services. Each data capsule also includes the number of providers Medicare paid, the average number of unique medical services per provider in the specialty, and the average payment per provider for drug services.

A few notes: The data are based on average allowed payments, and some data were excluded. For instance, services provided to 10 or fewer beneficiaries were not included. The data only cover those in the fee-for-service program of Medicare Part B, and thus does not reflect the payments and costs of patients with other forms of coverage. The agency noted that costs can also vary geographically, as CMS uses a cost-of-living adjustment. The drug services payments, which cover cases where providers purchase a drug and administer it to a patient, are paid at a rate of 106% of the average sale price for the drug administered.