CMS Open Payments

Open Payments is a national transparency program mandated by section 6002 of the Affordable Care Act. It requires certain pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers and distributors to report to CMS on an annual basis any payments and other transfers of value they make to physicians and teaching hospitals as well as any ownership and investment interests held by physicians or their immediate family members in their companies. CMS is mandated to collect that data via an electronic solution and make the data available for view and download by general public. The Open Payments System (OPS) is the electronic reporting solution that supports the Open Payments Program. In 2020 submission cycle that reports 2019 data, there was $10.03 billion with 10.98 million records published. At the beginning of 2021, the Open Payments system was enhanced to be comply with Fighting the Opioid Epidemic with Sunshine provision that was signed into law as part of Support for Patients and Communities Act on October 24, 2018. This enhancement expanded the Open Payments program to cover payments to physician assistants, nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, certified registered nurse anesthetists, and certified nurse midwives. In addition, CMS has identified several innovation to enhance the user experience and improve data quality to expand the system in order to meet future needs. These include improving the data quality by validating and standardizing Medical Devices, automating manual efforts, improving system performance, and reducing deployment downtime.

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