Pharma pushes back against CMS implication that industry is behind problems with Open Payments system

As issues continue with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) system for collecting data on industry payments to physicians and making a physician-verified version of that data available to the public by September 30, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) industry group says don’t blame industry for data problems.

In a statement issued by PhRMA Assistant General Counsel John Murphy, the group says its members submitted data “in a manner consistent with the reporting rules outlined.” Subsequent data issues that led CMS to remove as much as a third of the reported data from the Open Payments database it had set up to comply with the requirements of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act included in the Affordable Care Act were likely due to a lack of appropriate guidance from CMS, not a failing of the companies submitting the data.

CMS already took its Open Payments system down for two weeks in August and now, according to the American Medical Association (AMA), it plans to take the system down again on August 30 and September 5 for more maintenance and fixes.

"It is clear that the government's website is not ready for prime time," said AMA President Robert M. Wah, M.D., in a statement.

In addition, non-profit investigative journalism group ProPublica is reporting that a confidential source familiar with the matter confirms that CMS also has decided to not disclose research grants made by pharmaceutical companies to doctors through intermediaries, such as contract research organizations, because its system did not give doctors the opportunity to verify and dispute those payments. By law, physicians must have a chance to check and dispute possibly incorrect data before that information is made public.

The latest deadline for providers to check their information is September 10, and the AMA is pushing for even more time because its informal member survey shows that the system is far from a fair way for doctors to check what information has been reported about them. According to the AMA, 68 percent of its survey respondents said they had an overall poor registration experience with CMS’s Open Payments system, with some being unable to access the system at all. Among those who were able to access the system, 62 percent found that data contained in the reports about them was inaccurate.