Compliance with the Physician Payment Sunshine Act: What You Need To Know
Physician Payments Sunshine Act was created to increase openness regarding the financial ties between doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical corporations. The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Medicaid, and each of the three major federal health care programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and the Sunshine Act—all require drug businesses and producers of medical equipment and supplies to record and keep track of all financial connections with doctors and educational hospitals. Why did we need the Sunshine Act? Pharmaceutical sales, medical research, and other industries generate trillions of dollars each year, so there are obviously many opportunities for collusion, bribery, and other types of fraud that hurt consumers. How do Open Payments work? It's a federal initiative that gathers data on the travel, investigations, gifts, lecture fees, meals, and other expenses that drug and device manufacturers give to doctors and teaching institutions. It also includes a...