Government oversight is coming to the Open Payments program. Recently, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) awarded Bethesda, Maryland-based Econometrica, Inc., a five-year contract to provide research and analytic services for the Open Payments program.
Econometrica is a research and management organization that provides analyses, modeling, and economic evaluations for clients in a variety of public and private sectors. In addition to this contract with CMS, Econometrica also has contracts for various purposes with: the Department of Energy, the Department of Housing, NASA, the Transportation Security Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security.
The contract with CMS is in the amount of $13,311,763 for five years. Of this amount, 19.1% ($2,542,986) is committed to be spent between now and September 2019.
Applicable manufacturers should consider doing renewed due diligence on their data and analyze their data to ensure the data is consistent.
The information collected in the data analysis will provide CMS a robust report to congress in the coming years and perhaps changes to the open payments public interface.