The Open Payments system is up and running again, and federal officials said the technical glitches that caused data to be linked to the wrong physicians have been fixed.
Physicians and teaching hospitals now have until Sept. 8 to review the payment information submitted to the government by drug, device, and biological manufacturers. Despite the delay, the information is still on track to be publicly released on Sept. 30, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
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CMS officials urge physicians and teaching hospitals to verify their Open Payments data before Sept. 8.
The Open Payments Program, created by the Affordable Care Act, aims to add transparency to the financial relationships between the health care industry and physicians and teaching hospitals. But the effort to publish data on industry payments was delayed when CMS learned that some information was being incorrectly matched to physicians. The agency took the site offline on Aug. 3 to investigate.
"CMS takes data integrity very seriously and took swift action after a physician reported a problem," Dr. Shantanu Agrawal, deputy administrator and director of the Center for Program Integrity at CMS, said in a statement. "We have identified the root cause of the problem and have instituted a system fix to prevent similar errors."
Dr. Agrawal urged physicians to review their records before the Sept. 8 deadline to identify any potential errors.
The CMS investigation found that manufacturers and group purchasing organizations had submitted intermingled data, adding the wrong state license number or national provider identifier for physicians with the same first and last names. The agency implemented "system fixes," removed the inaccurate data, and revalidated the information.
Since the website used for physicians and teaching hospital to review their data was offline for several days, CMS has extended the deadline for reviewing and disputing data from Aug. 27 to Sept. 8.
mschneider@frontlinemedcom.com
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