CMS Fixes Payments Glitch, Reopens Site

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced this week that it has resolved the technical issue on its Open Payments system – the verification system for its physician payments website.

Earlier this month, CMS had to temporarily shut down Open Payments aftera glitch was discovered where at least one doctor had payments wrongly attributed to him. However, in a released statement CMS explained that Open Payments is again working, and to account for system down time the organization is extending the time for physicians and teaching hospitals to review their records to September 8, 2014. The public website will be available on September 30, 2014.

“CMS takes data integrity very seriously and took swift action after a physician reported a problem,” CMS Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center for Program Integrity Dr. Shantanu Agrawal said in a statement. “We have identified the root cause of the problem and have instituted a system fix to prevent similar errors. We strongly encourage physicians to review their records before the deadline and before the data are posted publically to identify any discrepancies.”

CMS added 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.