CMS Releases Long-Overdue 'Sunshine Act' Rule February 4, 2013 Health Care Reform, News CMS, Physician Payments Sunshine Act, Sunshine Act 0 CMS announced the long-awaited final rule on the Physician Payments Sunshine Act last Friday, which will raise public awareness of the financial relationships between medical device and pharmaceutical companies and doctors and teaching hospitals. The Sunshine Act—established under the Affordable Care Act—requires medical industry companies to disclose all transfers of monetary value over $10 to physicians and teaching hospitals. Under the final rule, manufacturers of pharmaceutical and biological drugs, medical devices and medical supplies—covered by Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP—starting August 1 will be expected to report all consulting fees, travel reimbursements, research grants and other gifts with values over $10 that they give to physicians and teaching hospitals. In addition, the manufacturers and group purchasing organizations will be responsible for reporting physician ownership and investment interests. CMS set the August 1 start-date for data collection to give the affected entities time to prepare, officials said. All data collected from August through December must be reported to CMS by March 31, 2014, according to the rule. The agency will publish the data on a public website by September 30, 2014, one year later than the date originally set in the ACA. Physicians will be given a 45-day "review and correction" period to ensure the accuracy of any disclosures to CMS, according to the final rule. The rule also notes that the Sunshine Act overrides similar state laws, creating the possibility of "cost-savings, since a single reporting system for reporting this information is less burdensome than multiple programs". The final rule is scheduled for publication in the Federal Register at the end of this week. Source: California Healthline, February 4, 2013. Comments are closed.
