CMS Announces Year Two of Open Payments Database
March 31, 2015 is the deadline for data submission in the second year of the Open Payments database.
- The first year of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid’s (CMS) Open Payments database has been rocky at best. Created by the Affordable Care Act and the Sunshine Act, the goal is to increase transparency when it comes to payments made by drug and device companies to physicians and teaching hospitals. Now, CMS has announced the beginning of year two of the program.
“Open Payments does not identify which financial relationships are beneficial and which could cause conflicts of interest,” Dr. Shantanu Agrawal, deputy administrator and director of the Center for Program Integrity at CMS, said in a statement about the initial launch in September 2014. “It simply makes the data available to the public. So while these data could discourage payments and others transfers of value that might have an inappropriate influence on research, education, and clinical decision-making, they could also help identify relationships that lead to the development of beneficial new technologies.”
The database houses 4.4 million payments values at nearly $3.5 billion, which is attributed to 546,000 individual physicians and almost 1,360 teaching hospitals.
However, a number of errors and other issues have been discovered. The first major problem was right at launch, as a number of payments were still be disputed by either the payer or the receiver. This was attributed to the short, five month period for gather the original data. The full vetting process was only completed in 4.8 percent of payments. There were also $2.2 million in de-identified payments. Just recently, it was discovered that the database is riddled with spelling mistakes.
This week, CMS announced that applicable manufacturers and applicable group purchasing organizations (GPOs) can start registering and rectifying their registration in the Open Payments system and begin data submissions for all payments that occurred during the calendar year 2014. All applicable manufacturers and GPOs are required to participate.
By March 31, 2015, all those in the program are required to submit any last minute corrected information from 2013 and the first set of data for 2014. Physicians and teaching hospitals should also register to allow for the most time to review information that has been submitted. The official start of the dispute period starts in April.
While it is clear that the first round of Open Payments data, did not go according to plan, the hope is that year two will be better. Any pilot program is going to have bumps upon launch and with the major hiccups not accounted for, the second year of Open Payments should be go more smoothly.
