Article preview from "The Gray Sheet"- December 19, 2011
Two-and-a-half months late and with only a draft version of the regulations released, CMS is giving device and drug companies, and GPOs, more time to prepare for impending requirements to report physician payments and investment interests to the government for public posting.
Article preview from "The Gray Sheet"- December 19, 2011
CMS finally released a proposed rule Dec. 14 on new requirements for device makers and others to disclose financial relationships with physicians and teaching hospitals, but when companies need to start tracking the required data remains up in the air.
What’s clear is that companies fearing a Jan. 1 start date will have a reprieve until sometime later in 2012.
The Physician Payment Sunshine Act was enacted in 2010 as part of comprehensive health care reform, requiring device and drug manufacturers to report payments and other transfers of value made to physicians and teaching hospitals to the government for posting on a public website. It also requires those companies, along with group purchasing organizations, to report physician ownership and investment interests.
The law is “intended to help reduce the potential for conflicts of interest that physicians or teaching hospitals might face as a result of their relationships with manufacturers,” CMS states.
Under the law, the Medicare agency was tasked with issuing procedures for complying with the mandates by Oct. 1, 2011, presumably giving companies three months lead time to prepare for a Jan. 1 start date. But as the October deadline for the final rule came and went, companies became nervous that they would not have enough time to comply, and lawmakers who wrote the Sunshine provisions publicly pressured the agency to issue the regulations.
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