Does your physician have a financial stake in the radiology lab she sends you to? Are you being steered to use a non-generic drug because your primary care doctor attended a private dinner party paid for by the Big Pharma company that makes the pills?
Now, those sorts of transactions will have to be disclosed to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
A new set of Sunshine rules — "Transparency Reports and Reporting of Physician Ownership or Investment Interests" — went live this week.
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The full impact of these financial transparency requirements won't be felt until at least next March. But the implementation of the first phase of the rules underscores that the medical profession and related parties are increasingly being held accountable under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The intention of the new regs, according to HHS, is to:
• Encourage transparency of reporting financial ties;
• reveal the nature and extent of relationships;
• prevent inappropriate influence on research, education, and clinical decision-making;
• avoid conflicts of interest that can compromise clinical integrity and patient care; and
• minimize risk of increased health care costs.
The reporting will be mostly done by the "applicable manufacturers and applicable group purchasing organizations" with which clinicians are often involved in financial transactions, from investments to steak dinners.
These organizations have until March 31 to submit relevant data for August through December of 2013. "Beginning in 2014, manufacturers and GPOs will be required to register on a CMS website and will submit data using templates," HHS has declared.
To keep up with it all, CMS authorized the creation of two mobile apps to assist in tracking the payments.
One physician interviewed by Kaiser Health News said he saw the new rules as nothing but another item to keep him from spending time with patients.
"We want to spend our time seeing patients, not doing paperwork," said Dr. Jason Mitchell, the director of the Center for Health IT at the American Academy for Family Physicians.
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Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
