Disputes on Your Sunshine Act 2017 Payments Must Be Resolved by May 15

Physicians have less than one week to review and, if necessary, dispute data on 2017 payments or other transfers of value from manufacturers of drugs, medical devices, and biologicals that were reported to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as part of the Open Payments program. All disputes must be resolved directly with manufacturers by Tuesday, May 15.

CMS will release this information to the public beginning June 30. After the review period closes on May 15, physicians can still initiate disputes, but updated data will not be displayed until the next reporting cycle.

The collection and reporting of these data are required under the Physician Payment 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. If you plan to review your data, test your CMS Enterprise Identity Management (EIDM) system log-in credentials beforehand here. Accounts that have not been accessed recently are locked; if your account has been locked, click here. APA members who have not yet registered on the Open Payments database can review APA’s resources here.

More information about how to review and dispute payment records in the Open Payments database can be found here.

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