Less than two weeks remain for physicians to review and dispute data about their financial interactions with medical device and drug manufacturers before the information goes public Sept. 30. Among physicians who have completed the complicated and time-consuming registration process, 62 percent found serious inaccuracies with the data in their reports, according to newly released survey findings.
If you haven’t started the process to review and dispute your data, you should begin right away to allow enough time to complete all the steps. An informal online survey of more than 200 physicians found that more than two-thirds of physicians had a poor registration experience overall with the Sunshine Act portal (also known as the “Open Payments” system). Findings also show that 83 percent of respondents said the system wasn’t user friendly.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced Thursday that the website again will be down for periods of time Aug. 30 and Sept. 6. As a result of the outages, the deadline for physicians to review and dispute their data has been extended by two days until Sept. 10.
“Continuing to shut down the website and moving the deadline for physicians to seek corrections is causing confusion and frustration among physicians,” AMA President Robert M. Wah, MD, said in a news release.
“Patients need accurate information. If the government releases incorrect information to the public, it can lead to misinterpretations, harm reputations and cause patients to question their trust in their physicians,” Dr. Wah said. “Inaccurate data can also unfairly impact physicians’ ability to attain or keep research grants and other employment opportunities that require disclosure.”
The AMA and 112 specialty and state medical societies earlier this month urged CMS to postpone the release of physician financial data for six months, to March 31, pointing to the host of issues that have plagued the data review and dispute process and the agency’s lack of communication around the problems.
In the meantime, physicians should get started with the Sunshine Act review process. Use the CMS Enterprise portal and Open Payments system to register and review your data. Follow these three steps:
- Complete the CMS e-verification process
- Register with the Open Payments system
- Review and dispute your data by Sept. 8
The first two steps alone can take up to 48 hours to complete and receive verification, so allowing enough time is important.
Any incorrect data that you haven’t disputed by Sept. 10 won’t be flagged as potentially inaccurate in the Sept. 30 public data release. Although you can dispute your data through Dec. 31, it will not be marked as disputed in the public database.
If you previously had trouble accessing the online review portal, try again now. The site suffered from numerous technical problems and was shut down until last week after physicians were accessing incorrect data.
According to CMS, the agency has identified about one-third of the data as having errors and plans to withhold this group of data from the initial public data release. It’s up to individual physicians to identify inaccuracies in their remaining data.
