The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) periodically issues Frequently Asked Questions to guide stakeholders through the Open Payments process. FAQs generally are either aimed at questions of Sunshine Act interpretation or questions related to data submission and other technical aspects of the reporting or review and dispute process. CMS’s initial round of FAQs, which came out after they issued the Final Rule in 2013, were almost exclusively related to Sunshine Act interpretation (e.g. what items or materials are considered education materials and are not reportable transfers of value? FAQ8161). As the deadline for companies to actually submit data got closer, FAQs almost exclusively covered technical aspects of the reporting procedure (e.g. is an applicable manufacturer required to report all taxonomy codes for a physician or just the primary taxonomy codes? FAQ9148)
Latest FAQs
- April 2015:: CMS’s most recent activity has actually been to issue newly clarified language for three Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) related to indirect payments and continuing medical education that CMS had issued in December 2014. CMS also has removed their “Law and Policy” page, which offered hypothetical reporting scenarios that many stakeholders felt misinterpreted the Sunshine Act Final Rule. These three new FAQs are available under the Final Rule Changes topic. View CMS’s previous language here (zoom as necessary with the PDF).
- June 2014: Our last update to the FAQs focused on a batch of 27 FAQs related mostly to technical aspects of Open Payments: registration, attestation, and submission of data.
List of FAQs
By our count, CMS has 134 FAQs currently listed on their website–however, these are often difficult to search, based on the Open Payments’ method of listing. We have posted the FAQs bew in categories organized by the question’s subject matter. Note: Some questions are listed under multiple topic areas. This should help companies and other interested parties find the answers to the questions that affect them.