Following news of data errors that caused CMS to take its Open Payments website offline, the American Medical Association is calling on the agency to delay the portal's public launch by six months, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
The AMA thinks a delay is necessary to give physicians enough time to make sure the database is accurate and that the public will understand it, according to the report. In an interview with the Journal, AMA President Robert Wah, MD, noted that his organization supports transparency but also said that " anybody who's looked at this website and read the 300-plus page document [that physicians must review to navigate the system] could understand more time is needed. Six months is a reasonable amount of time to get the word out to 200,000-plus physicians about what they need to do to ensure the information is accurate." Here are five things to know about the Open Payments portal and why the AMA wants its launch delayed.
1. The Open Payments website — an online portal listing payments from drug and device makers to physicians and teaching hospitals — is currently scheduled to go public Sept. 30 under the Physician Payment Sunshine Act. CMS has allowed physicians and teaching hospitals to access the portal before it goes public to review the data included and ensure its accuracy.
2. Providers originally had until Aug. 27 to review and dispute any information in the database. However, last month, CMS extended that deadline to Sept. 8 following some issues with the portal. In early August, ProPublica reported CMS had temporarily suspended the Open Payments portal after a physician saw payments to another physician with the same name in his records. Shortly afterward, The Hill reported CMS was taking the system offline temporarily "to investigate a reported issue." Providers were not able to review the data while the site was being fixed.
3. The temporary suspension of the site came days after a group of physicians sent a letter to CMS urging the delay of the Open Payments portal's launch until March 31, 2015, in order to give physicians more time to register, review and dispute the data. The physicians expressed concerns about the complexity of the database registration process, incomplete guidance and inadequate registration time, among other issues.
4. CMS brought the site back online on Aug. 18. The agency's investigation revealed manufacturers and group purchasing organizations submitted "intermingled data" for physicians with the same last and first names, according to CMS. This erroneous data — such as incorrect state license numbers or provider identifiers — falsely linked physician information in the system. However, CMS said it enacted system fixes and revalidated all data in the system. Incorrect payment transactions have been removed, according to the agency.
5. Last week, CMS announced the Open Payments site would be unavailable at times on Aug. 30 and Sept. 5 for maintenance. The AMA has said CMS' announcement about the site going offline again shows the portal isn't ready to go public. "It is clear that the government's website is not ready for prime time," Dr. Wah said. "Today's news that the system will be offline for periods of time on Aug. 30 and Sept. 5 supports the findings of a recent informal online survey conducted by the AMA, where 68 percent of the respondents said they had an overall poor registration experience and 62 percent of physician respondents who were able to access the system found that data contained in the reports was not accurate."