The drug and device industry made about $4.6 billion in payments to physicians and teaching hospitals in the last 5 months of 2013, according to updated data from the government.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released a massive data set detailing payments from industry to health care providers as part of the new Open Payments program, a transparency initiative mandated under the Affordable Care Act. In the initial data release on Sept. 30, the agency said that industry payments totaled $3.5 billion across 4.4 million published payment records. But updated figures, released by the agency Oct. 6, show that the industry spent an additional $1.1 billion for 199,000 payment records that have yet to be published.
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In total, manufacturers made $551 million in payments related to products in development.
The CMS held off on publishing payment data for two reasons: Either there was an unresolved dispute at the end of the 45-day review period, or the manufacturer requested a delay in publication because the payments were related to a drug or device that was still under development.
The bulk of the unpublished payment data – about 190,000 records – falls into the “delay in publication” category. In total, manufacturers made $551 million in payments related to products in development. Under the regulations governing the Open Payments program, the delay cannot exceed 4 years or the date when the product is approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
The rest of the unpublished payment data relate to about 9,000 payments totaling $514 million that are still under active dispute. About 91% of the total payments in question are associated with only 40 disputes, according to the CMS.
The next round of Open Payments data, which will include payments from all of 2014, will be published in June 2015.
mschneider@frontlinemedcom.com
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