Physician Payment Sunshine Act: Open Payments Final 2015 Data Submission and Attestation Help

 

In our latest endeavor to try to help you wade through the lengthy regulations known as Open Payments leading up to the March 31 submission deadline, we drafted the following article on the Final Submission and Attestation process.

In order to meet the requirements of Open Payments, officials from manufacturers and GPOs are required to submit final payment or other transfer of data value or ownership/investment interest data. In addition to the actual submission of the data, authorized officials must attest to the accuracy of the data.

Once the final data is submitted, the Open Payments system then matches your submitted information with physician and teaching hospital profiles. If your information is unable to be matched, you will be notified and given an opportunity to correct and re-submit the final data. It is important to realize that reporting under Open Payments is not considered complete until the official attestation is received.

Additionally, prior to final submission and attestation, the user must be registered in the Enterprise Identity Management System (EIDM) and the reporting entity must be registered in the Open Payments system. The user who submits the data is known as the submitter user, while the user who attests to the accuracy and truthfulness of the data is the attester for the reporting entity.

Final Data Submission

Prior to submission, you must make sure that all data within the selected payment type is in “Ready for Submission” status, which means that all validation and matching errors have been corrected on your end.

To complete the final submission, you should log into the Open Payments system through the CMS Enterprise Portal at https://portal.cms.gov, and select the “Submissions” tab. From there, utilize the drop down menu to select the reporting entity and the program year for which you want to complete the final submission, and select “Review Records.”

Once on the records review page, select “View All” for one of the three payment types (general, research, and ownership/investment). On the “Payments Category” page for the selected payment type, the “Final Submission” button should be enabled, click it. On the “Confirm Final Submission” page, review the summary details and select “Submit as Final Submission” if the information is correct. If the displayed information is not correct, select “Cancel” to go back and make any necessary changes to the records.

If the “Final Submission” button above is not enabled, review the status column on the left side of the page. If any of the following statuses are listed for the records, you will not be able to perform the Final Submission for that payment type: System Processing, Failed Validation, Failed Matching Validation.

You will need to repeat the final data submission steps for each of the three payment types (general, research, and ownership/investment).

When you select “Submit as Final Submission,” an email notification will automatically be sent to the attester letting them know that there are records ready for their attestation if (1) all records across payment categories are now in “Ready for Attestation” status; and (2) no records for that program year had previously undergone attestation.

If any records for the program year have already undergone attestation and re-attestation is required, select the “Notify Attester” button once all records are ready for the attester to review. This button will send the email notification to the attester that new records are ready for their attestation. Re-attestation will be required any time previously attested data is changed, including any data fields, delay in publication indicator, or deletion of records.

Attestation

Once the data has undergone final submission, the attester will be able to attest that the information is accurate and complete. Only individuals who are in the attester role may complete the attestation process.

Records that were previously attested to that were marked for deletion must be re-attested to for those records to be removed from the Open Payments system. A summary of records that are marked for deletion is provided during the attestation process.

To complete attestation, the attester needs to log into the Open Payments system via the CMS Enterprise Portal and select the “Submissions” tab. From there, select the reporting entity and program year for which you want to perform attestation and select “Review Records.”

To view records in “Marked for Deletion” status, select “View All” next to the payment category for the records you wish to examine. On the following page, in the Record Status filter box, check the box for “Yes” under the heading “Marked for Deletion,” and select “Search.” When you are ready to attest, return to the “Review Records” page.

Once you’re on the “Review Records” page, select “Begin Attestation of All Records.” Attestation is conducted for all records for that program year, across all three payment types.

If the “Begin Attestation of All Records” button is not enabled, check that all records for that program year are in “Ready for Attestation” or “Attested” status. If they are not, reach out to a submitter for the reporting entity and let them know that there are records that still need to be advanced to the “Ready for Attestation” status before you can begin the attestation process.

On the “Confirm Payments” page, review the summary of records being attested to and continue to “Next.”

If you have made any assumptions in either preparing or submitting the data, include that on the “Add Assumptions” page. If you do choose to include an assumptions statement, the assumptions are entered in a free-form text box with a 4,000 character limit. The assumptions statement can be edited at a later time.

On the “Agree to Attestations” page, review the attestation statements and select the checkbox next to all statements which apply to the submission. Checking the first two statements is required in order to proceed. Additionally, if you are attesting to the deletion of previously attested records, checking the sixth statement is highly recommended.

A summary of all records that are being attested to and deleted will be displayed. When finished, select “Continue,” to move to the “Review and Attest” page. Once you have reviewed the information displayed, select “Attest” to complete the attestation.

The Final Submission and Attestation phases are now complete. If any disputes arise, both the submitter and the attester may need to review and resolve them as they arise.

Additional Help

If you need further assistance, data submission resources can be found on the Resources page of the CMS Open Payments website at http://www.cms.gov/OpenPayments/About/Resources.html. The Open Payments User Guide also has a chapter on the Data Submission and Attestation processes, Chapter 4, which provides step-by-step instructions for various potential scenarios.