Data Center Maintenance Extends Open Payments Review and Dispute Deadline

The Open Payments system will be inaccessible during a series of scheduled maintenance upgrades at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) data center in the coming weeks with the next outage scheduled for Saturday, September 5, 2014. The downtime duration has not been determined yet. To allow for ample time for doctors to review and dispute the data contained in the system, CMS is extending the deadline for review, dispute and correction. The new timeline is:

  • Review and dispute (45 days): 8/14/2014 – 9/10/2014
  • Correction period (15 days): 9/11/2014 – 9/25/2014

The date for data publication remains the same, September 30, 2014.

CMS is staffing a live help desk throughout this new process. Live Help Desk support is available by calling 1-855-326-8366, Monday through Friday, from 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. (ET), excluding Federal holidays. Or you can submit an email to the Help Desk at [email protected]. For more information about Open Payments please visit the Open Payments website.

The Open Payments database will make public any data reported about physicians by drug companies, manufacturers and group purchasing organizations (GPOs) as part of the Sunshine Act. The new law was designed to enhance transparency of physicians’ financial interests. Currently, physicians who register at the Open Payments website will be able to review and dispute any information reported about them by the applicable manufacturers prior to public posting of this information on September 30. The system has been plagued by glitches and has had to be shut down unexpectedly once before.

The North Carolina Medical Society (NCMS) along with 111 other medical societies and the AMA voiced concerns in a recent letter to CMS urging the agency to reconsider how it is rolling out the Open Payments program.

 
 

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