In recent years, hospitals and health systems have started using a decade-old database that houses information on industry payments to physicians to ensure compliance and manage conflicts of interest, The Wall Street Journal reported July 23.
The Open Payments database launched in 2014 to bring transparency to the financial relationships between healthcare providers and pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Despite this data being publicly disclosed, in 2023 companies paid nearly $13 billion to medical providers, up from $6.49 billion in 2014, according to CMS data cited by the Journal.
Many industry payments made to physicians are legal, but providing or soliciting them in exchange for a referral of services or products paid for under federal programs violates anti-kickback laws. Some hospitals and systems, such as Corvallis, Ore.-based Samaritan Health Services, have used the database to monitor for conflicts of interest surrounding their research and procurement practices. For instance, compliance officers can use the database to vet the disclosures shared by physicians.
"Part of what the health system has to respond with is: OK, you invented this device. However, you can't sit on the [hospital's] supply chain committee that decides which devices we buy," Anne Daly, RN, chief compliance officer of Samaritan Health Services, told the Journal. "Doctors aren't thinking that way."
How and to what extent hospitals are using the Open Payments database to manage conflicts of interest varies across institutions, executives told the news outlet. For example, smaller hospitals may not have the ability to use it as strategically as their more-resourced counterparts.
While compliance with the Anti-Kickback Statute falls largely on companies making payments and the physicians receiving them, hospitals can face costly consequences for oversights. Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health paid $20.3 million in 2019 after prosecutors claimed it failed to address claims that a top neurosurgeon received kickbacks for using a device he had a hand in developing.