Open Payments review and dispute period ends May 15

Physicians and teaching hospitals have until May 15 to review financial information reported about them under the “Open Payments” system and dispute information they believe is incorrect before the information is released to the public on June 30.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) annually asks pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers and group purchasing organizations to report all payments or other transfers of value they made to physicians and teaching hospitals during the previous year. The June 30 release includes information for 2015, along with updates to the databases for 2013 and 2014.

The review process is voluntary, but to participate and file disputes, you will need to register in both the CMS Enterprise Identity Management System (EIDM) and the Open Payments system itself.

If you registered last year, you don’t have to register again. Go to the CMS Enterprise Portal, log in using your user ID and password, and navigate to the Open Payments system home page. If you haven’t accessed your account in the last 60 days, you will need to answer some challenge questions and then reset your password. If you haven’t visited in more than 180 days, you’ll have to contact openpayments@cms.hhs.gov to reinstate your account.