Physician and Hospital Sunshine Act Review and Dispute Date Extended

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As we previously discussed here, soon all direct or indirect payments to physicians and teaching hospitals from drug and device manufacturers will be publicly available.   The Physician Payment Sunshine Act is a national transparency program in which certain manufacturers of drugs, devices, biologicals, and medical supplies and government purchasing organizations (“GPOs”) are required to disclose certain financial relationships with teaching hospitals and physicians.

As required under the Sunshine Act, manufacturers of covered products and entities under common ownership with those manufacturers must, on an annual basis, report payments or other transfers of value made to teaching hospitals and physicians. Further, GPOs are required to report payments or other transfers of value made to physician owners or investors.

Once the information has been submitted, teaching hospitals and physicians will have a period during which they can review and dispute the data.  Originally, the review and dispute period was to end on August 27, 2014.  However, this period has now been extended to September 8, 2014.  Further, once reviews and disputes have been made, a correction period will occur between September 9th and September 23rd.  All information will still be made public on September 30th, 2014 as previously stated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
It is imperative physicians and teaching hospitals take advantage of this extension to ensure accuracy of the data which will become publicly available on September 30th, 2014.  If you have any questions regarding the registration process or the compliance issues related to the Sunshine Act, feel free to contact Alex T. Krouse at (574) 485-2003 or Susan E. Ziel at (612) 564-1927.