Physician Payments Sunshine Act: CMS Extends Dispute Window to September 8; Data Will Go Live September 30
As an update on our continuing coverage of the Open Payments website and physician dispute resolution process, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has just officially announced that their website has re-opened and that CMS would indeed extend the dispute period. Notably, the public website launch is still slated for September 30, 2014.
The announcement states:
“CMS has re-opened the Open Payments system after taking it offline to resolve a data integrity issue. Physicians and teaching hospitals may now resume registration, review and, as needed, dispute activities, and will have until September 8, 2014 to complete this process. This date accounts for all the days the system was offline to provide physicians and teaching hospitals with 45 days total to review and dispute their payment data. After the close of the 45-day period, industry will have an additional 15 days to resolve remaining disputes directly with the physician and teaching hospital and re-report any data that is changed. “
The original timeframe was as follows:
- Review and dispute (45 days): 7/14/2014 – 8/27/2014
- Correction period (15 days): 8/28/2014 – 9/11/2014
- Public website launch: 9/30/2014
The revised timeframe is as follows:
- Review and dispute (45 days): 7/14/2014-8/2/2014 (20 days), 8/15/2014-9/8/2014 (25 days)
- Correction period (15 days): 9/9/14 – 9/23/14
- Public website launch: 9/30/2014
“CMS took swift action to close the system and fully investigate issues which indicated possible data matching errors within the Open Payments system. Applicable manufacturers and group purchasing organizations (GPOs) submitted intermingled data, such as the wrong state license number or national provider identifier (NPI), for physicians with the same last and first names. This erroneously linked physician data in the Open Payments system. After careful review, CMS implemented a system modification that included more enhanced algorithms and validation checks to resolve the issues, and verified that the physician identifiers used by the applicable manufacturer or GPO are accurate, and that all payment records are attributed to a single physician. Incorrect payment transactions have been removed from the current review and dispute process and this data will not be published this year.”
“Data accuracy is critical to the success of this transparency program, and CMS is committed to ensuring the integrity of data made available to the public.”
Physicians and teaching hospitals can now register in Open Payments to review their payments: