Physician Payment Sunshine Act: CMS Releases Updates to Open Payment Mobile Apps, Technical Modifications to Data Submission Process

In July 2013, we reported that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released two Open Payments mobile applications, Open Payments Mobile for Industry and Open Payments Mobile for Physicians. CMS developed the apps to help physicians and manufacturers/GPO’s to keep records for Physician Payment Sunshine Act reporting. They can be downloaded free of charge and used on a mobile device. The mobile apps allow both industry and physician users to track payments and other transfers of value in real-time. Although physicians themselves are not required to report anything, they can use the mobile apps to help them track and ensure accuracy of information on their financial relationships that will be reported by industry.

Enhancements to the Original App

This past week, CMS introduced enhancements to the original Open Payments mobile applications. Changes, listed below, include streamlining various processes and providing a new function to view reports of payments in bar and pie chart form.

Downloading or Updating Apps

For those who have not yet downloaded the apps, search for Open Payments in the applicable app store and you will be prompted to download the newly updated versions. If you have already downloaded the apps, you will need to run an update to take advantage of the new app functionality. CMS instructs users who have the APP to visit either the Google Play™ app store or iOSApple™ app store, look for available updates, and select the Open Payments apps to download the updates.

You will not lose any data you’ve entered into the old version of the apps. It will all be transferred into the new version of the app.

QR Code Technical Guide Available for Apps

CMS also offers a how-to guide for the Open Payments apps that explains the technical details associated with how to create Quick Response (QR) codes usable by the apps. The Open Payments QR Code Reader How-To Guide is targeted to industry users and contains detailed, highly technical instructions for creating or importing contact information using a QR code reader, and generating a QR code to transfer profile or payment information to other user’s devices.

For help with the apps you can contact CMS’s Help Desk at Open Payments@cms.hhs.gov. Further information on the apps can be found on the Open Payments website.

Technical Updates to Data Submission Process

In addition to the updated mobile apps, CMS released information about changes to the data submission process. The XSD (XML Schema Definition) document used to create and validate XML submission files for the three payment types will be modified in two ways:

• All elements with comma-separated values have been turned into groups of repeating elements: e.g., State and License Numbers, product names, NDC.
• A typo in an element name is corrected: “ownershipPhysicianSpecailty” has been changed to “ownershipPhysicianSpecialty.”

The following change has been made to the sample files (in both XML and CSV formats), that will be used as a reference by reporting entities to upload data into the Open Payments system:

• The Physician Specialty has been corrected to use the codes rather than the descriptions.

The following changes apply to the CSV sample files only:

• All the space and hyphen/dash characters in the CSV headings have been converted to the underscore (_) character.
• In the Research-category CSV header, Home Payment ID has been corrected to read Home System Payment ID.
• In the General Payment CSV sample file, a couple of issues with the sample data have been corrected.

Finally, in the Submission Data Mapping Document (a mapping of data elements listed in the Submission File Specifications to the specific data fields in the XML and CSV sample files), additional notes have been made to add clarity on what should be followed if the schema/sample files differ from the Submission File Specifications.

CMS advises that industry users should review these materials closely, and contact the Help Desk at OpenPayments@cms.hhs.gov with any follow-up questions.