Manatt Health Professional Comments on Final Physician Payment Sunshine Act Rule
"Final Sunshine Rule Gives Doctors More Room to Experiment"
Law360
February 5, 2013 - Manatt's Ian Spatz, a senior advisor with Manatt Health Solutions, spoke to Law360 about how the Physician Payment Sunshine Act final rule could affect patients' perceptions on their physicians participating in research.
Law360 reports that the long-awaited final rule implements provisions of the Affordable Care Act that require drug and device manufacturers to publicly report most payments and transfers of value they make to physicians and teaching hospitals. The proposed rule required manufacturers to trace their payments down to each physician who worked on research, which concerned the industry because it could have dissuaded doctors from participating in future research projects.
Taking into account these critiques, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services simplified the reporting requirements for research in the final rule. Manufacturers will be required to list the entire research payment, along with the institution and the lead physician researcher, but can omit the name of each doctor who worked on a study.
Some industry experts think that reporting the research payments at all could be a cause for concern, if patients perceive research grants to mean their doctors are biased.
"The research side still gives me the most concern about perception," said Spatz. "Payments for research are not taking a doctor out to dinner. They're a normal part of the workings of the physician community . . . . What's going to be the perception there?"
He said that, on the one hand, a patient could say, "It's great that my physician is so able that they're getting all these research grants." But Spatz said he also envisioned a scenario where news outlets publish "top 10" lists of local doctors making the most in drug company payments, without providing enough context, sending patients fleeing because of perceived bias and scaring doctors out of participating in research.
"That could have a chilling effect on collaborations, which is bad for the patient," he said.
Read the article here.