Personally identified data about physicians not publicly available soon could be shared with government agencies, law enforcement and Medicare contractors without physicians’ knowledge, under a new “system of records” announced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
The agency has said it will disclose information collected about doctors through the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (also known as the “Open Payments” program) that won’t be made available through the public data release scheduled for Sept. 30.
This data can include a physician’s Social Security number, date of birth, primary phone number, email address and some personal financial information.
The purposes CMS has outlined for sharing such data would include:
- Supporting regulatory, payment and policy functions by CMS contractors and consultants
- Supporting litigation involving the agency
- Assisting with fraud, waste and abuse detection and prevention activities
The AMA has told CMS it is overstepping its bounds in this expansion of data sharing.
The Sunshine Act “was intended to create accurate reporting of data and transparency, not as a means to override physicians’ due process and privacy rights,” the AMA stated in a letter sent to the agency last week.
“Physicians are entitled to be notified whenever CMS, a contractor or other federal agency, state entity, party, company or organization is provided personally identified information from CMS other than through the public Open Payment portal,” the letter said.
The letter points to concerns about the accuracy of this data, not the least of which is that CMS has not given physicians sufficient time to dispute inaccurate information before it is shared.
In the meantime, physicians can protect themselves against inaccurate data being reported to the public in the Sept. 30 data release by registering now to review and dispute their data. Learn about the steps you need to take and important dates in the AMA’s Sunshine Act toolkit.
