News Feature | August 12, 2014

AMA Urges Open Payments Delay

Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

CMS Urged To Delay Open Payments

The American Medical Association, along with more than 100 other groups, is asking CMS to delay the launch of Open Payments.

The Sunshine Act is set to launch the Open Payments database in September, but medical professionals are asking CMS to delay that deadline. In a letter to the agency, the American Medical Association, along with 100 other groups, urged CMS to delay the launch of the system saying it isn’t ready to go live.

“There are widespread concerns that the implementation of this new system for data collection … will not be ready and will likely lead to the release of inaccurate, misleading and false information,” the letter said. “The agency has not provided effective notification to the vast majority of physicians nor provided a reasonable amount of time … to engage and educate physicians on the registration and dispute process.”

The letter cites the following concerns:

  • An overly complex registration process that is made up of more than 20 individual steps that requires physicians to register over a period of several days to see their data. The AMA urged CMS to streamline the process.
  • The importance of maintaining the exclusion of continuing medical education data from reporting when the industry donor is unaware of the speakers and other participants before committing to fund the activity.
  • The need to exclude journal article reprints, medical textbooks and other services used to educate physicians from Sunshine Act reporting because they have a direct benefit to patients. A specific exclusion in the Sunshine Act, as set forth by Congress, excludes materials that directly benefit patients; including them in the Sunshine Act is inconsistent with congressional intent, the letter said.
  • The potential for industry organizations to unilaterally dismiss disputes initiated by physicians. CMS has not clarified previous guidance that said drug manufacturers could dismiss a dispute if they were to determine no change was necessary, without resolving the dispute with the initiating physician.

According to iHealth Beat, the letter has asked CMS to change the launch date to March 31, 2015. Noting that "without minimally a six month period to upload the data, process registrations, generate aggregated individualized reports and manage the dispute communications and updates," the database "will not be ready and will likely lead to the release of inaccurate, misleading, and false information."