Time to Review Your Sunshine Act 2014 Payment Records

A 45-day window opens today (April 6) for physicians and teaching hospitals to review and dispute any incorrect data that pharmaceutical companies, biological makers, and device makers have reported about them to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as part of the Open Payments program. The data will be made available to the public beginning June 30.

This is the second reporting cycle for the Open Payments program and covers payments made in 2014. After the review period closes on May 20, physicians can still initiate disputes, but updated data will not be displayed until the next reporting cycle.

CMS developed the Open Payments program to comply with the Physician Payment Sunshine Act (Sunshine Act), which is part of the Affordable Care Act. The Sunshine Act requires manufacturers of drugs, medical devices, and biologicals that participate in U.S. federal health care programs to report certain payments and items of value given to physicians and teaching hospitals. CMS is required to report this information annually.

The review process is voluntary, but registration in both the CMS Enterprise Identity Management System (EIDM) and the Open Payments system is required to review the data and file disputes. APA members who have not yet registered on the Open Payments database should do so now. For more information, click here.

For information on the release of the first round of data last September, see the Psychiatric News article, “Open Payments Database Debuts for Public Scrutiny.”

(Image: Shutterstock.com/wenani)