Phase 2 of Open Payments Registration Now Open

Phase 2 of registration for the Open Payments website opened on July 14.

Registration for the site will allow physicians to access and review data reported about them by applicable manufacturers and GPOs. The 45-day dispute period for incorrect or incomplete data also began on July 14 and ends on August 27. Physicians can make disputes after reviewing their reports and industry will have until September 11 to correct the information. Any disputes not resolved by that date will still be published on the Open Payments site but will be marked as disputed.

The Open Payments website is a result of the Sunshine Act provisions of the Affordable Care Act with the goal of increasing transparency regarding financial relationships between industry and physicians. Under the terms of the Sunshine Act, manufacturers are required to report to CMS payments or other transfers of value they make to physicians and teaching hospitals.

In order to register for Phase 2, a physician must have already completed registration for Phase 1, which encompassed registration in for the CMS Enterprise Portal. Registration is voluntary but only those physicians registered will have the opportunity to review the data and make disputes to industry before the data’s publication on Open Payments on September 30, 2014.

The first publication will include reports on payments and value transfers from August 1, 2013 through December 31, 2013.