How Will Healthcare Reform Impact Your Next Investigator or Advisory Board Meeting?
February 28, 2011 · Leave a comment
Regulatory Guidance from Aprel Buonpane
The main components of the new US healthcare reform legislation will continue to be subjects for debate in the coming months and years, but tucked in among all of the changes for Medicare beneficiaries, coverage for pre-existing conditions, and the effects on small business owners lies a provision that most laypeople would not even notice. This provision, however, has the attention of US drug and device manufacturers and cannot be ignored.
The Physician Payment Sunshine Provision, also known as the Sunshine Act, requires that these companies publicly report gifts and payments made to physicians and other entities such as teaching hospitals. The intention of the provision is to address the public’s perception that biopharmaceutical companies use payments to influence a physician’s prescription-writing habits and to improve transparency as to what actually does exchange hands, in the form of services and remuneration for those services, and why. Drug and device manufacturers must begin capturing this data in January 2012 and must make their first report on these activities to the Department of Health and Human Services by March 2013. This provision has far-reaching implications for how the medical meetings and event industry will conduct its business in service of the healthcare community for years to come.
The new law requires that every dollar spent on physicians and health care ... read more »
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