45-day Review Period for Open Payments Program Begins in April

Doctors of optometry will get their chance to review—and dispute, if need be—soon-to-be-released data on payments made to them in 2015 by drug and medical device manufacturers. Under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS') Open Payments transparency program, the 45-day review period for the data will begin in April.

After the review period, CMS will make the 2015 data available to the public on June 30 on its website. Therefore, it is important that doctors check their information to ensure its accuracy during the review period.

Part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Open Payments system (also known as the "Sunshine Act") requires drug and device makers and group purchasing organizations to disclose payments or gifts to optometrists and other doctors on an annual basis. Publicly reported payments received by doctors include:

•    Cash or cash equivalent
•    In-kind items or services
•    Stocks, or stock options, or any other ownership interest, dividend, profit, or other return on investment
•    Any other form of payment or other transfer of value

Gifts might include travel and lodging, grants, consulting fees, honorarium, education, and food and beverages. The system is meant "to increase public awareness of financial relationships between drug and device manufacturers and certain health care providers."

What Doctors of Optometry Need to Know About Open Payments

To review their data, doctors must be registered in CMS' Enterprise Identity Management and Open Payments systems. Once registered, they will be sent a notification when their data is ready for review. CMS also will be posting a notice on its Open Payments webpage and sending notifications via its listserv.
To learn more about the Open Payments process, doctors can:

•    Visit the CMS' review and dispute process web page.
•    Participate in a CMS conference call on the Open Payments program, its timeline and deadlines. The call is set for 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. PST on Tuesday, April 12.

Registration will close when available spaces for the call are filled or at noon on the day of the call.

If an doctor wants to dispute his or her information, he or she must contact the manufacturer—CMS will not be arbitrating disputes—through the Open Payments system to dispute and resolve concerns about data. Once a dispute is received, the manufacturer can correct the data or leave it as posted, but marked as "disputed." If doctors have problems with disputed data, they may contact the AOA's Washington office by emailing Kara Webb, AOA associate director for coding and regulatory policy.
 
Read more on this topic from AOA here.