{"id":8216,"date":"2021-01-22T12:57:21","date_gmt":"2021-01-22T17:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/?p=8216"},"modified":"2021-01-22T12:57:39","modified_gmt":"2021-01-22T17:57:39","slug":"understanding-the-sunshine-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/understanding-the-sunshine-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding the Sunshine Act"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Sunshine Act came into existence as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2013. The Sunshine Act was a watershed moment that created transparency in the medical field. Financial relationships between medical providers and manufacturers became available to the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sunshine Act resulted from a Senate probe that found that undisclosed payments to physicians could influence the way medical research and care was done. Even small financial ties were found to push physicians towards significant bias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are a health care provider, what do you need to understand about Sunshine Act compliance? Read on and we’ll walk you through what you need to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Sunshine Act and Health Care Providers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The impact of financial payments on the behavior of medical workers can be quite large. The Sunshine Act served to lift the veil on these behind-the-scenes transactions. It allows consumers and the general public to see who their care providers are taking money from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the Sunshine Act, any money that comes in from an outside source needs reporting. Many different payment types would fall under this umbrella.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consulting fees, lodging and travel expenses, licensing fees, journal reprints, and so on all must be reported under the Sunshine Act. All of these payments must be reported on an annual basis to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, the Center publishes all the data<\/a> as one large report later on. The public can access these reports and see where their medical care provider is receiving payment from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunshine Act Compliance Reporting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you are a medical care provider or a pharmaceutical manufacturer you are likely going to need to take on some extra work to stay in compliance with the Sunshine Act requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Failure to comply can result in fines of up to $100,000 depending on the specifics of a case. If it can be proven that the failure to comply was not accidental but intentional, the fines can be even higher. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you can imagine, it is essential to stay on top of the Sunshine Act & Aggregate Spend Compliance Reporting<\/a> if you hope to stay out of financial trouble. It’s important to leave the responsibility of tracking meetings and payments to an employee or team of employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are several programs available that can help those in the medical field to easily track payments received and provide a report to the CMS promptly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many cases, manufacturers will be the ones to report their payments and physicians might only need to look at the submitted data and verify its accuracy. This can help keep the time required for medical care providers down and put the burden more on manufacturing companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding the Sunshine Act<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you work in the medical industry in any form, you must understand what the Sunshine Act is all about. Transparency helps the general public a great deal. It’s important to ensure the information you are providing is accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Need more business advice and information? Keep scrolling our blog for more. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sunshine Act came into existence as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2013. The Sunshine Act was a watershed moment that created transparency in the medical field. Financial relationships between medical providers and manufacturers became available to the public. The Sunshine Act resulted from a Senate probe that found that undisclosed payments to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8218,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8216\/revisions\/8218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}