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CMS Opens Physician Registration for Sunshine Act

 |  By John Commins  
   June 02, 2014

The process is going forward despite the protestations of the American Medical Association, which has complained that CMS "has missed nearly every deadline laid out in the law and regulations to implement it."

The first part of a two-stage federal registration process for physicians and teaching hospitals that want to review or dispute payments and gifts they received from drug and medical device makers opened on June 1.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced earlier this year that on Sept. 30 it will make public "transfers of value" reported by vendors under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act.

Providers will have the opportunity to dispute the vendors' claims before the reports go public, but only if they register this summer. The vendors' reports are expected to be made available to providers sometime in July, CMS said in a media release.

The first step is for physicians and teaching hospitals to register using CMS's Enterprise Portal, which is the gateway to CMS's Enterprise Management system so they can access the information provided by the industry.

Phase 2 begins in July and allows physician and teaching hospital registration in the Open Payments system to review and dispute data submitted manufacturers and group purchasing organizations before the data goes public.

Disputed data that is not corrected by the industry will still go public, but it will be marked as disputed.

The process is going forward despite the protestations of the American Medical Association, which has complained that CMS "has missed nearly every deadline laid out in the law and regulations to implement it."

The nation's largest physicians' association noted that pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers were supposed to submit their reports by March 31, but that the database has yet to be completed.

Given those delays, AMA President Ardis Hoven, MD, called in vain for an extension of the registration and review period for physicians. CMS has taken no action the request, so Hoven is urging physicians to register.

"The Sunshine Act will impact many physicians with a current medical license and it is important that they are properly registered to review and ensure the accuracy of the data reported by manufacturers and group purchasing organizations before the world sees it," Hoven said in prepared remarks.

"To avert one of the problems that came to light as a result of the Medicare claims data release earlier this year, we strongly urge physicians to make sure their information in the national provider identifier database is current."

Physicians are not required to register or send information to Open Payments. However, to ensure accuracy in the reporting, CMS is encouraging doctors to become familiar with the information that will be reported about them, and to communicate with drug and device makers and GPOs to ensure that the information they are submitting is accurate.

The AMA has set up a Sunshine Act Web page to help member physicians wade through the process.

John Commins is a content specialist and online news editor for HealthLeaders, a Simplify Compliance brand.

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