From the September 2013 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
By Austin Klein
As of August 1, 2013, the Physician Payments Sunshine Act requires medical supply companies to report certain payments and items of value given to health care professionals. The law requires disclosure of direct compensation, food, entertainment, gifts, travel, consulting fees, honoraria, education, research, grants, charitable contributions, royalties or licenses, current or prospective ownership or investment interests, speaker fees or any other transfer of value as defined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The data will be available on a public searchable database beginning in 2014.
Sunshine Act compliance challenges and fines
Companies impacted by the Sunshine Act should already be tracking those expenditures incurred in direct marketing as part of their expense reporting process. However, the challenge in tracking these types of expenses with the level of detail required by the provisions of the law lies in the complexity associated with breaking down cost detail and knowing exceptions and state specific requirements.
Yet, it’s financial irresponsible to neglect the required reporting. For each failure to report, fines of up to $10,000 will be applied, not to exceed $150,000 annually. For each knowing failure to report, fines of up to $100,000 will be applied, not to exceed $1,000,000 annually.
Meeting new legislative requirements
Ensuring compliance has prompted medical device and pharmaceutical companies to find solutions that track expenses without adding undue administrative burden to employees. Manual reporting (such as paper-based forms), or systems that do not provide data collection at the required level of detail is inadequate for supporting the aggregation of total data and ineffective for efficient operation of the business.
The expense reporting output should be electronic, searchable, and easily downloaded. An expense solution that supports these requirements from the beginning of the input process allows the business to have proactive control and management, not only of the data itself, but of the direct marketing process as a whole.
Control of the reporting process is paramount to ensuring accuracy and the ability to data thereby helping to meet the new legislative requirements.
Automated expense software as a solution
Automated expense management software can help companies maintain compliance with enhanced tracking, policy and reporting functionality. Web-based travel and expense management software simplifies the tracking of expenses by easily itemizing and categorizing expenses by recipient.
