RKL eSolutions Blog

Sunshine Act – How can your ERP system simplify reporting?

Written by RKL Team | Aug 25, 2015 11:19:25 AM

What is it?

On March 31, 2010, the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (P.L. 111-148), more commonly known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), was signed into law.  There are many broad reaching topics and implications that have affected millions of American businesses and medical professionals.  The act charged the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid services (CMS) to monitor payments between applicable manufacturers and Group Payment Organizations (GPO) and their recipients.

In general, manufacturers of drugs, medical devices and biologicals that participate in U.S. federal health care programs have been tasked to provide detailed reports that are used to monitor non-sales or purchase business relationships between physicians, teaching hospitals and manufacturers.  As such, the CMS is responsible to implement the Sunshine Act and the “Open Payments Program”.   The Open Payments Program is an active data repository where the value of payments or transfers are reported.  The CMS OPP serves as an intermediate for Physician Financial Transparency Reports or the “Sunshine Act”.

How is the data used?

The data collected by the CMS is used primarily to publish information from applicable manufacturers and GPOs about payments and transfers of value that they make to physicians and teaching hospitals.  Manufacturers and GPOs report each form of payment or transfer of value made, including:

  • Anything of value, (cash or cash equivalent form, given by a company to a physician or teaching hospital).
  • The nature of each payment.  These nature of payment categories were established in Section 1128G(a)(1)(A)(vi) of the Affordable Care Act.

As such, manufacturers must have internal reporting systems that can easily capture information and serve as a conduit for providing detailed information and reports.

Law and Policy

Open Payments is Section 6002 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law No. 111-148), as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (Public Law No. 111-152).

How Does X3 Help?

Sage X3 is uniquely designed with reporting in mind.  Data collection often is associated with financial reporting.  X3 Dimensional, or, “Analytical” Accounting provides a simple method to achieve the desired results.  There are several transactions that provide this feature.  More specifically Invoice and Expense reporting.

X3 mobile applications are ideal for streamlining data collection and providing timely and actuate reporting for field based personnel.

Dimensions are user definable, and, provide easy and accurate information for both internal and external reporting.  Multiple currencies, legislations and languages help simplify reporting efforts too! Informational inquiries, such as the one shown below, can be exported in many different data formats, and, transmitted to the CMS electronically.

Please contact us for a free assessment of how your company can benefit from Sage X3, support@rklesolutions.com or 717-735-9109 x4.