Physician Payments Sunshine Act: Physicians and Teaching Hospitals Can Register with CMS Starting June 1, May Be Able to Check Data Sometime in July
Physician and Teaching Hospital CMS Registration Begins June 1
We have speculated for a long time now about when physicians would be able to register on CMS’ Open Payments database. CMS has just given us part of the answer.
Starting June 1, physicians and teaching hospitals that choose to participate in Open Payments will need to initially register in CMS’ Enterprise Portal. Sometime in July, physicians will actually be able to register in the Open Payments system, check their data, and potentially engage in dispute resolution with pharmaceutical and device companies.
We would recommend that doctors engage in this process in order to dispute information with industry that they believe to be inaccurate or incomplete. As part of the Sunshine Act, companies were required to collect enormous amounts of spend data on almost every transfer of value they made to doctors. Physicians and other covered recipients are not only the ones that will bear the brunt of the public scrutiny, but they are in the best position to know whether the data that industry collected was correct or not.
CMS plans to publish the transfers of value on a searchable public site on September 30th this year.
Registration through CMS’ Enterprise Portal is required, and will take place in two phases:
Phase 1 (begins June 1) includes user registration in CMS’ Enterprise Portal.
Phase 2 (begins in July) includes physician and teaching hospital registration in the Open Payments system, and allows them to review and dispute data submitted by applicable manufacturers and applicable group purchasing organizations (GPOs) prior to public posting of the data. Note: Any data that is disputed, if not corrected by industry, will still be made public but will be marked as disputed. Learn more about the review and dispute process here.
CMS states that “[i]n the coming weeks, CMS will provide additional guidance about how to complete the CMS registration process, and when Phase 2 registration and the review and dispute process will begin for physicians and teaching hospitals.”
CMS also developed a brochure last year that they recommend physicians share with their patients.
The dispute process will take place at least 60 days before the information is made public, to allow for 45-day and 15-day periods, as described in this table:
CMS also recommends that physicians can learn more about Open Payments requirements by reviewing the Program Overview for Physicians, as well as continuing education materials relating to Open Payments, available on the Physician page of the Open Payments website.