portfolio-small-cms-govCMS announced the beginning of the 45 day Open Payments (“sunshine payments”) review and dispute period.  This period ends May 15, 2016.  CMS will publish the 2015 payment data on June 30, 2016.  This includes updates to 2013 and 2014 data.

The Affordable Care Act requires manufacturers of drugs, medical devices and biologicals that participate in U.S. federal health care programs to report certain payments and items of value given to physicians and teaching hospitals.  CMS has been charged with implementing the Sunshine Act and has called it the Open Payments Program.

Important information for ACG Members:

Why is it important to review Open Payments data?

You can review the payments that drug or device companies claim to have paid you. If the data is wrong, you can dispute it and give drug or device companies the chance to fix the data before the public can see it.  The public will be able to see the data about you on June 30th.

Drug or device companies could also submit older data from previous years.  Once data is submitted, for the previous year or older years, the review and dispute period is the only time that physicians can use to dispute the data before it is public.

What’s the data review & dispute timeline?

You’ll have 45 days to review (and dispute, if needed) the data about you.  Then, the drug or device company has 15 days to fix any disputed records.

What is the process to review and dispute?

Please click here to register or log into your account.  The process requires 2 steps:

Step 1: Register in the Enterprise Identity Management System.
This step confirms your identity and makes sure others can’t get your information.

Step 2:  Register in the “Open Payments system.”  This step lets you see the data reported about you.

If you have a staff member that you would like to review the data, you are able to nominate one person in the system (Click here to see the reference guide).

-ACG News Team