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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has adopted several of APA’s suggestions regarding the Physician Payment Sunshine Act in a final rule issued by the agency this week. And APA has prepared an extensive analysis of the act and the CMS final rule.
The Physician Payment Sunshine Act, approved as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, requires applicable manufacturers of drugs, devices, biologicals, or medical supplies covered under Medicare, Medicaid, or CHIP to report annually in electronic format to the Secretary of Health and Human Services certain payments or other transfers of value they have made to physicians and teaching hospitals. The manufacturers and group purchasing organizations are subject to civil monetary penalties if they fail to comply with the reporting requirements of the statute. CMS must then submit annual reports to Congress and each state summarizing the data on physician and hospital payments that the companies have reported.
In response to an earlier CMS rule, APA urged the agency to strengthen its dispute-resolution process and to push back the beginning of the data-collection and reporting periods—advice that is reflected in the new final rule.
See APA’s analysis of the rule here. For more information about the Sunshine Act see Psychiatric News here.
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