Data on Gifts and Payments to Physicians to Be Collected Starting in August 2013

Drug and medical device manufacturers will be required to collect data on gifts and payments made to physicians beginning Aug. 1, 2013, as the delay of implementation of the Physician Payment Sunshine Act will come to an end.

The first round of data must be reported to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) by March 31, 2014, and will be released publicly on Sept. 30, 2014, through the electronic reporting system.

Physicians and teaching hospitals will have 45 days before the data is published to review it and submit corrections. CMS plans to have an online portal that physicians can use to find out what has been reported about them. PAMED will inform members when the link becomes available.

Among other concerns, many physicians had urged CMS to exclude certified CME from the reporting requirements. The final rule excludes accredited CME activities that meet the definition of indirect payments. Read more.

The Physician Payment Sunshine Act, a section of the Affordable Care Act, is aimed at discouraging inappropriate financial relationships between manufacturers and physicians.

Last Updated: 2/27/2013

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 Comments: 5


I agree with Informed Medical Student. Maybe it is time WE stopped accepting bribes from drug and medical device companies. And perhaps it is time our politicians and businessmen did the same.

Informed Attending Physician at 4/5/2012 11:02:26 PM


I agree with Informed Medical Student. Maybe it is time WE stopped accepting bribes from drug and medical device companies. And perhaps it is time our politicians and businessmen did the same.

Informed Attending Physician at 4/5/2012 10:57:09 PM


I am retired, so it really does not matter to me. However, this so-called Sunshine Act and the privacy regulations which are in current vogue seem to me to be mutually exclusive. We all know that the privacy act was passed to protect the gay community from being "outed" by AIDS testing. However, it has become entirely too restrictive, to the point that I was not permitted to be be informed of my colleague's [he was my senior partner, and the man who recruited me to come to share a practice with him] hospitalization for his final illness.

Donald K Roeder, MD at 4/5/2012 5:11:42 PM


I actually find nothing wrong with the sunshine act requiring physicians and drug companies to disclose payments. There are numerous examples of cardiologists, urologists and spinal surgeons who have implanted devices and hardware in patients while receiving financial payments from the hardware manufacturers. You can't tell me or the American consumer that a doctor's judgement isn't a little bit swayed by the offer of thousands of dollars if they choose hardware A vs hardware B vs no surgery at all. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704336504576259142044058726.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704493004576001582557244592.html

Informed Medical Student at 4/5/2012 3:27:20 PM


Harm to patients and abuse of government and private insurance companies' payments does occur when pharmaceutical and device manufacturers give gifts, payments, and vacations to physicians, who are not responsible for or did not in a substanial way contribute to the discovery, invention, or design of any medication or device. Why should physicians be compensated in this way, when the patients, the actual ginnie pigs, are not? Afterall, it is the patient's life that is being put on the line. Corruption and abuse of patients does occur when certain medications and devices are prescribed, over-prescribed, specially when a monetary carrot is dangled in front of the physician's eyes by a pharmaceutical or device manufacturer. If pharmaceutical and device manafacturers can deal with the complexities of reporting requirements to get their products tested and approved through the FDA's process, they can just as easily design or have designed by an outside company a record keeping system to track and collect data about payments made by their company reps. to doctors. For those who say, this is too complex, too much work I say, "Who are you trying to fool?" The mere idea that my physician may be prescribing me a drug because there is an additional monetary incentive waiting for him for doing so disgusts me because it is highly unethical, a breach of the Hippocratic oath to "DO NO HARM". My physician, if he is to be an ethical professional, should be cognizant of this at all times. Prescribe for me only those medications that are proven to be the best to treat my condition and because it will not harm me. Forget your monetary rewards, doctors. Your reward will come when I tell others how you healed me or made my condition better; more patients will want to come to see you for treatment. I am glad that there is the Sunshine Physician Act; it shows that someone is watching out for me, the patient.

B.J. DeRonde at 3/28/2012 6:15:06 AM

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