PPACA Impact and Opportunities : Health Care Lawyer & Attorney : Epstein Becker Green Law Firm : Insurance & Costs : Health Reform Musings Blog

The Physician Payment Sunshine Act, which was incorporated into Section 6002 of the Affordable Care Act, requires pharmaceutical, medical device, biological and medical supply manufacturers to file annual reports on payments to physicians and teaching hospitals. Despite the requirement in the law that manufacturers submit their first report in March 2013 disclosing payments made during 2012, two events have pushed back that obligation or taken the sting out of noncompliance.

First, although Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) was required to publish standards for reporting information and making that information available online to the public, it has yet to publish final regulations. As recently as May 2012, it posted a blog notice on its website announcing that manufacturers will not be required to start collecting data until January 1, 2013. The reason given for the delay was that it simply needed time to sort through the over 300 comments that were received.

The second event that should be good news to manufacturers comes from Vermont. Vermont, along with eight other states and the District of Columbia, already have laws requiring manufacturers to report payments to physicians as well as financial penalties for failing to submit reports. Even though the Sunshine Act supersedes those state laws, any part of a state law that contains different or broader reporting requirements than the federal law remains in effect. However, since CMS has not published its regulations, answering that question may be more difficult than it appears at first. The good news is that the Vermont Attorney General has offered a limited amnesty to manufacturers of medical devices and biologics (but not pharmaceuticals) who did not report during any period between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2011. The reprieve waives the penalties, but not registration fees or penalties under other state laws. While a complete report is not required immediately, the offer is for a limited time only and is good through October 1, 2012. Any inquiries should be sent to the Vermont Attorney General’s office at prescribedproducts@atg.state.vt.us.

For more information, contact the author at rwanerman@ebglaw.com.

by Jason B. Caron

On May 22, 2012, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (“PCORI”), a private nonprofit entity established by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, announced that it will be seeking applications to fund an initial $96 million in grants for innovative research projects in clinical effectiveness research. These grants will be awarded in four areas recently identified in PCORI’s National Priorities Research Agenda.

Read the full alert here

Adam L. Zavadil, a Summer Associate (not admitted to the practice of law) in Epstein Becker Green's Washington, DC, office, contributed significantly to the preparation of this alert.

Back in 1996, the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice, in providing antitrust guidance for multi-provider networks, considered financial integration and clinical integration as separate pathways for such networks to avoid per se violations of the antitrust laws and, instead, to be treated under the rule of reason, allowing for an assessment of their procompetitive vs. anticompetitive effects. With 65 organizations now participating in Medicare shared savings initiatives, including the 27 Medicare Shared Savings Program participants announced on April 10 (there are 32 Pioneer Accountable Care Organizations and 6 Physician Group Practice Transition Demonstration organizations), we can see, 16 years later, how clinical and financial integration in fact go hand in hand.  Under these various accountable care arrangements, multi-providers entities contracting with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as ACOs are required to demonstrate both quality (i.e., delivery reform featuring clinical integration) and cost efficiency (i.e., payment reform featuring financial integration).

Click Here to Read the Full Blog Post on the Health Affairs Blog

As the health care world awaits the Medicare Shared Savings Program regulations expected to be issued soon by CMS, below is a wish list for key attributes that I hope the regulations evidence:

1. Flexibility. 

 "Transforming health care everywhere starts with transforming it somewhere." I hope that CMS takes Atul Gawande's advice and avoids being too proscriptive in launching the Share Savings Program. To me, the biggest risk to the program is being deemed a failure for having gone down too narrow a path that turns out to be unsuccessful.

Useful approaches have been suggested for tiering ACOs and providing for related payment methodologies based on levels of ACO capability. If some form of risk sharing model is going to be included along with simple share savings, let's not at the outset go so far along the risk axis that many start-up but promising ACOs would be excluded. Flexibility will encourage positive experimentation and inclusiveness in the interest of learning over time.

2. Discipline.

 At the same time, the ACO regulations need to have teeth. Despite the ongoing policy debates about how to measure quality and value, we know enough now for CMS to provide strong minimum requirements that will separate ACOs that show real promise from those that do not. In order to qualify for bonus or risk-based payments, ACOs will need to demonstrate both the current capability and the future capacity to further the triple aim goals of accountable care--improved patient outcomes, patient satisfaction and cost efficiency.

Such evidence will then justify appropriate recognition and protection under the fraud and abuse laws and antitrust laws, among others. And the discipline must be ongoing and progressive--continued qualification and continued improvement. Failure to maintain such qualification must have consequences--both financial and legal.

3. Simplicity.

One of the risk factors in the success of the Medicare Shared Savings Program is that it will be too complicated to implement effectively. There are a million ideas out there about ACOs--regarding structure and governance, assigning beneficiaries, what measures to use, how to allocate savings, etc.

Failure to construct a manageable pathway and an understandable set of rules at the outset--for diverse providers to follow and for consumers to understand and embrace--will severely threaten the ultimate success of the program. It would be easy to try to do too much too fast due to the pressure to "bend the cost curve," among others. I hope that CMS keeps it simple, straightforward and understandable with achievable program goals.

4. Patience.

Even if the regulations evidence flexibility, discipline and simplicity, we will need to be patient. "We" means CMS, Congress, private payers, providers and consumers. This program is one component of a broader set of ideas relating to health care payment and delivery reform in both public and commercial settings. The overall goal is to achieve the triple aim stated above--or as CMS Administrator Berwick often puts it, "better care, better health and lower costs"--through a variety of means and over time.

The Affordable Care Act in its entirety encompasses new quality reporting requirements, value-based purchasing programs, bundling pilots, gainsharing demonstrations, readmissions penalties and other methods of "testing, testing." Not to mention the efforts of the new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. If the Medicare Shared Savings Program tries to do too much too quickly on its own and the goals are not measured and paced, it inevitably will be judged unfairly and will not make as helpful a contribution as it otherwise might.

5. Harmony.

Another word I might have chosen here is coordination, but coordination is a means to harmonizing the activities and impact of the relevant federal agencies involved in ACO implementation, the various payment and delivery reform components of the Affordable Care Act and the public and private sector initiatives in this arena. Is such harmony too much to hope for? Perhaps, but it should be a goal and it should be achievable over time.

CMS, OIG, FTC and DOJ already have evidenced coordination in the days before and following their October 5, 2010 public workshop on the antitrust issues and fraud and abuse issues related to ACOs. Coordinated guidance is reasonable to expect. The ACA explicitly allows for the coordination of ideas and best practices in accountable care efforts in connection with both governmental and commercial health care payment practices. It certainly is within the power of Secretary Sebelius and Administrator Berwick to harmonize the implementation of Sections 3021, 3022 and 3023 of the ACA, along with the many other provisions that relate to achieving accountable care.

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The ACO regulations should be out soon. They of course will constitute a start, not a finish. There will be much more work to be done. But my wish--and I am hopeful--is that they lay out a constructive and manageable pathway that fits with others in helping to advance the triple aim.

Doug Hastings

Now that we have sweeping new health care legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("the Act"), let's look at the rollout of the accountable care provisions--i.e., those changes to the payment and delivery system that hold the most long-term promise of improving quality and cost-efficiency. They are discussed in my most recent article: "The Timeline for Accountable Care: The Rollout of the Payment and Delivery Reform Provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Implications for Accountable Care Organizations," published last week in the BNA's Health Law Reporter.  Click here to read the full article (PDF).

In my most recent article in the series I have been writing for the BNA's Health Law Reporter on payment and delivery system reform, accountable care organizations and bundled payments, I comment on where things are now that federal reform has stalled. The article, titled "Payment and Delivery System Reform: It's Only a Matter of Time," argues that changes in payment and delivery are on the horizon regardless of the pace of federal reform and that providers (and payers as well) should continue their efforts toward accountable care to meet the cost and quality challenges that are no less daunting today than they were a month ago. Please click here to view. I hope you find it of interest.