'Sunshine Act' Database Now Open for Public Review

The public now has access to the first round of data reported by the pharmaceutical and medical-device industries regarding payments that physicians and teaching hospitals may have received from them. The database, managed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and known as Open Payments, was established in accordance with the Physician Payment Sunshine Act (PPSA) as part of the Affordable Care Act. According to CMS, its purpose is to increase transparency and accountability in health care.

The database lists consulting fees, research grants, travel reimbursements, and other gifts provided to physicians and teaching hospitals. It contains 4.4 million payments valued at nearly $3.5 billion paid to 546,000 physicians and almost 1,360 teaching hospitals. Forty percent of the records do not carry personally identifiable information because they did not meet CMS’s integrity standards for consistency of information when matched across other databases.

The data available today were collected from August to December 2013 and were available for review and dispute for a total of 45 days ending September 11.

Beginning in June 2015, reports will be published annually and will include a full 12 months of payment data. Physicians still have until December 31 to dispute 2013 data, but disputes will not be flagged in the public database until the next publication cycle.

APA members are encouraged to visit the public Open Payments database and review any data that may have been reported about them. Those who have not yet registered on the physicians' Open Payments database should do so now. For more information, click here.