Todd Park, Government Data Transparency and Medical Cost Discrepancies
Chief Technology Officer Todd Park promotes a new executive order making government information open and machine-readable by default. The initiative aims to increase transparency in the medical industry, where Medicare mandates for electronic record-keeping are revealing massive price discrepancies for identical procedures across different hospitals.
todd park· barack obama· medicare· medical records· data transparency
00:00 Please, can you peel me another grape? Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak. It's Thursday, May 9th, 2013. Time for your Gitmo Nation Media Assassination Episode 511! This is no agenda. Dodging the distractions at the Travis Heights Hideout where the President visits today! In Austin, Tejas in the morning everybody. I'm Adam Curry. And it's Garbage Day here in Northern Silicon Valley where I'm John C. Dvorak. Oh, the president's hitting Dallas? Dallas! Oh, Austin. Yeah. Sorry. I was thinking... Really? The other president. That really hurt. That was unnecessary. I was going to say Houston. Yeah, well check this out. Here's our Chief Technology Officer of the United States, Todd Park, explaining what the president's going to be doing.
01:03 The president is kicking off a middle class jobs and opportunity tour with a visit to Austin. A middle class jobs and opportunity tour. That's right. Hey, proud to be middle class. A rising, thriving middle class is key to America's economic future. Our future prosperity rests upon creating more new middle class jobs, equipping Americans with the skills to do those jobs, and ensuring that hard work leads to a decent living. Austin leads the country in manufacturing and tech job growth. The president will be visiting with local entrepreneurs who created innovative new companies that have also created a ton of new jobs in the manufacturing and technology industries. He'll also be visiting a local high school where kids are learning tech skills, real world tech skills that they'll need to compete in the job market of today and tomorrow. Like Facebook! Very, very good.
01:53 This guy got to do with it. Yeah, because it's a... It's a tech thing. Does the president have a sore throat? No, this is... All of a sudden Todd Park is in the news a lot. We've got all this tech stuff that... I think what was released today, today there was something else that was new. A new initiative for the incredible transparency that is our government. I've never seen a picture, this is funny because I was going to laughingly say that Todd Park, Park you must be Korean. Jokingly. Yeah. And then I look at his picture, he is Korean. Yes he is.
02:37 Executive order today making open and machine readable the new default for government information. Yeah, that's a big deal right now. What? Machine readable? Yeah, they want everything machine readable. Right now the big thing going on in the medical industry is that all the doctors offices around the country are being turned into electronic nightmares because they have to because the Medicare people said that you have to spite I think 2014 you have to be switched over completely to electronic record-keeping right well we're not gonna pay our any bills you send us right
03:17 And then yesterday Todd Park was giving a press conference with Spokesall Carney. I didn't get any clips from it, but what they've done is they've now released all the information in machine readable format so you can see what each procedure costs in each hospital and the discrepancies in cost are quite interesting. I'll bet. You can have $5,000 in one hospital and then two towns over it's $250,000. Seriously, that kind of difference. Yeah, no, this has been a problem for years. Yeah, the same thing with testing. There'll be one procedure, you know, usually a CAT scan or something in one operation and a big waiting list. And then another place will have machines ready to go at half the price.
