Development of a Web Application to Calculate the Number and Proportion of Procedures Submitted to Medicare Part B by Advanced Practice Providers.

Abstract

BackgroundThe role of advanced practice providers (APPs) in procedural care in the U.S. is growing. However, research comparing outcomes of procedures performed by APPs vs physicians is limited.ObjectiveTo develop a free web application for publicly available data which calculates the number and proportion of any procedure or set of procedures submitted to Medicare Part B by APPs.MethodsWe designed the web application with as simple infrastructure as possible. The application is a static site with two external dependencies and contained in HTML and JavaScript files. The data source is the Physician/Supplier Procedure Summary from CMS. This annual public dataset between 2010 and 2025 includes summary Medicare Part B fee-for-service claims. We implemented a suite of validation tests. The most important test compared the output of the application to the output from downloading data from CMS and processing it in a separate pipeline.ResultsThe free web application may be accessed in common internet browsers at https://open-hsr.github.io/advanced-practice-providers/, does not require data to be downloaded or processed in statistical software, and incorporates all publicly available data. The user inputs up to twenty-five HCPCS procedure codes, and the output includes a line chart and downloadable CSV file.ConclusionAs the role of APPs in procedural care in the U.S. grows, the output of the application can identify procedures for which comparative effectiveness research by clinician type may be useful and can be incorporated into proposals requesting resources to design and conduct that research.