CMS Payments Site Heading For More Downtime

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced last week that its Open Payments website was going to experience downtime for “scheduled maintenance upgrades.”

The outages are scheduled for August 30 between 1 and 11 a.m., and September 5, according to Modern Healthcare. A time is yet to be released for the latter date.

Because of the scheduled downtime, the review-and-dispute process for doctor data displayed on Open Payments will be extended until September 10, the agency said.

Moreover, the delay will hold off the corrections period to September 25, the news source stated. Even so, CMS said that the data will be made public on September 30.

Earlier this year, a glitch was discovered on the Open Payments website. A doctor discovered that certain payments had been wrongly attributed to him. However, CMS released a statement that it had resolved the technical issue.

At the time, CMS said that all data in the system was revalidated to ensure that the physician identifiers used by the applicable manufacturer or GPO are accurate. Additionally, all payment records were confirmed to be attributed to a single physician.