CMS shares information, analysis of vendor-contributor transactions

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on the day of Thursday posted full-year 2015 financial information on its Open Payments website, made to assist clients better understand financial relationships between the proposed physicians and drug and medical device companies.

Better collection and analysis of financial transaction information by CMS sustain its program to detect trends in contributor-vendor relationships and present relevant data to the public. Instead of lauding the transparency attempts, a leading U.S. medical agency inquired the validity of the data, the attempts to observe it and its relevance for clients.

The information accumulated for 2015 involves data about 11.9 million records attributed to almost 619,000 physicians and 1,116 teaching hospitals, totaling $7.52 billion. Under the supervision of Sunshine Act, drug and device companies are needed yearly to report financial interactions with contributors to CMS, which the agency makes public through its Open Payments program.

“Transparency is motivating physicians to be purposeful about their economical relationships with companies, and there is a prominent shift towards charitable contributions and away from other interactions, like honoraria and gifts,” stated Shantanu Agrawal, MD, a CMS deputy administrator and director of the Center for Program Integrity.

Over the course of the program since the year of 2014, CMS has issued 28.22 million records, accounting for $16.77 billion in payments, and ownership and contribution interests.

Besides the 2015 Open Payments data, CMS also issued on the day of Thursday newly submitted and updated payment records for the years of 2013 and 2014 reporting times. In accordance to the agency, the year of 2015 information is the 2^nd second full year of data present on the Open Payments website.

Although, the American Medical Association sustains to take problem with the Open Payments program, calling into question the precision of the published data.

However the AMA says it remains committed to transparency and the availability of data for sufferers to make informed decisions about their medical care, the physician group asserts that the Open Payments information issued by CMS must be valid, reliable, and complete—a bar that it considers remains too high for the agency.

“While we acknowledge the attempts of the CMS to verify the information submitted by industry, continued information errors and registration challenges during the last 2 years have thwarted several physicians from engaging in the review and validation procedure,” in accordance to a written statement from AMA. “The integrity objectives of the Open Payments database will not be met as long as physician review is obstructed by a registration process that is annoying, time consuming and overly burdensome.”

Additionally, the group discussed that “publishing wrong information leads to misinterpretations, ruins reputations and undermines the trust that sufferers have in their physicians,” and “it can also discourage research and care delivery improvements that give advantage to sufferers.”

AMA also stated that it powerfully condemns unsuitable, unethical interactions between physicians and industry. At the similar time, the association made the case that “not all interactions are unethical or unsuitable,” and that “there are relationships that can assist to drive innovation in patient care and offer key resources for professional medical education that finally benefits sufferers.”