The Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has established a website where the public can see how much the agency spends on Medicare patients for the most common inpatient services. 

The web dashboard is one of several initiatives by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to make available some of its data for public view.

The dashboard can be viewed at the following url:  http://www.cms.gov/dashboard/

Publication of the information is part of a larger effort to make government operations more transparent.  Last year, the Obama administration issued a directive to make government operations and performance more accessible public view. 

The initial data sets contain information from claims paid through the Inpatient Prospective Payment System from January 2006 to December 2009.  The plan calls for updating the data on a monthly basis. 

Provision of the data is part of HHS’s Community Health Data Initiative, intended to give Americans more information on healthcare performance in their locale and to encourage improvements in care.

Later this year, HHS plans to make available quality and cost of care provided under Medicare at the national, state and local levels.