'Transparency reports' on industry payments to physicians and teaching hospitals

摘要

Public awareness of industry payments to physicians and teaching hospitals in the United States is about to markedly increase. As required by the "Sunshine" provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, by September 2013 the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is to publish "transparency reports" that disclose these industry payments on a public website; the information must be "searchable," "clear and understandable," and "able to be easily aggregated and downloaded."1 Unlike most disclosures of physician-industry relationships to date, the reports will include the amounts of payments or other "transfers of value." Payments large and small should be revealed, including the drug or device that the payment was related to.