The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) an advisory board to the U.S. Congress, has announced a November public meeting, held November 3-4, 2016, at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC. The meeting will focus on a variety of topics, including the Open Payments program and the way CMS collects data from drug and device manufacturers and group purchasing organizations (GPOs) on their financial relationships with physicians and teaching hospitals.
With regard to Open Payments, MedPAC notes that during 2015, manufacturers and GPOs reported making roughly $7.5 billion in payments and other transfers of value to over 600,000 physicians and over 1,100 teaching hospitals. The data includes payments for royalties, consulting, promotional speeches, research, and other activities, along with physicians’ ownership interests in manufacturers and GPOs. MedPAC staff will present results from their analysis of the new 2015 data, and will ask Commissioners to provide feedback on the analysis.
The agenda meeting can be found here, and includes topics such as: stand-alone emergency departments; payments from drug and device manufacturers to physicians and teaching hospitals, 2015; determining benchmarks and beneficiary premiums under a premium support system for Medicare; and Medicare Advantage: calculating benchmarks and coding intensity.
The meeting will provide several opportunities for public comment (two fifteen minute opportunities on November 3, and one fifteen minute opportunity on November 4), though comments are also accepted through email beginning roughly one week before the meeting and for one week thereafter.