You may recall back in October 2018 when we wrote a short article on the contract the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) awarded Econometrica, Inc., to provide research and analytic services for the Open Payments program. At that time, it was noted that the contract was for 5 years and 19.1% of the total money awarded was to be spent before September 2019.
A quick look at the Econometrica website shows what the contracted money will be spent on. According to Econometrica, “the purpose of this contract is to ensure that data collected through the Open Payments system are accurate and complete prior to publishing to the public.”
Econometrica notes that it will be working with Acumen, LLC, to aggregate and match information from various datasets to “accurately summarize the business relationships between the healthcare industry and providers.” Econometrica and Acumen will analyze the data for “completeness and accuracy” on a weekly basis, at which time the team will flag errant records and work with CMS to correct any incorrect data.
Econometrica will also be working to identify parties that should be entering information into the Open Payments system, but are not, and will conduct ad hoc tasks to reinforce the Open Payments system, such as identifying ways to increase the speed at which compliance checks can be made.
“Our experts in data and analytics look forward to using their skills to support the Open Payments program, serving CMS and the public,” said Cyrus Baghelai, Econometrica’s President and CEO. “In the next few years, this program will likely expand exponentially. Econometrica looks forward to supporting CMS through this transition and to providing the public with more information about how healthcare providers are being compensated by the healthcare industry.”
Analysis
This investment by the government serves as a notification to companies that they need a clear understanding of what is happening within their data. Failure to do so may be deleterious to the company.