Open Payments Discussed at MedPAC November Meeting

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission meets publicly in Washington, D.C. to discuss various Medicare issues and policy questions, as well as to develop and approve reports and recommendations to Congress. During the November public meeting, Ariel Winter and Amy Phillips discussed, “Payments from drug and device manufacturers to physicians and teaching hospitals, 2015.” Ms. Winter and Ms. Phillips discussed the background and description of the Open Payments (public reporting) program, results of their analysis of 2015 data from Open Payments, as well as possible future changes to Open Payments. Background The pair went back to where it all started, discussing the fact that the Commission recommended public reporting of financial relationships between drug and device manufacturers and providers and other organizations in 2009. In 2010, Congress created the public reporting system through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), and in 2013 CMS implemented the Open Payments system. Since that time, the media and researchers have been trying to use the data found in the Open Payments system to shed light on physician-industry ties. For example, according to DeJong et al., 2016, “physicians who received industry-sponsored meals related to brand-name medications prescribed those medications at a higher rate.” Yeh et al., 2016, discussed the way physicians in Massachusetts who received industry payments prescribed brand-name statins to beneficiaries at...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs