A time-consuming, non-user friendly and complicated registration process, which physicians are required to complete in order to review information being reported about them. A 421 page Open Payments User Guide provides too much information for all users while not detailing all the steps involved for physicians to verify their identity, register with the system, review personal reports, and seek correction of any inaccurate data.

What Does Having Financial Relationships with Industry Really Mean?


Publicly reporting industry payments to individual physicians can imply, wrongly, that such payments are always inappropriate. Some may be, but to be able to make an informed judgment, it is vital to be able to set the financial information in context. Just because a physician has a relationship with industry does not automatically mean that his or her professional judgment has been influenced inappropriately.

AMA strongly opposes inappropriate, unethical interactions between physicians and industry. However, relationships with industry also drive innovation in patient care, contribute to the economic well-being of communities, and provide significant resources for professional medical education, to the ultimate benefit of patients. An urgent challenge for both physicians and industry is to preserve strong, productive collaborations for the benefit of patients and the public and at the same time take clear, effective action to avoid conflicts of interest and relationships that would undermine trust.

Meanwhile, CMS is required by the Sunshine Act to provide context for the data released through the Open Payments program. AMA and other stakeholders have repeatedly offered to help CMS in developing meaningful contextual guidance, yet the Agency has done the bare minimum to comply with the letter of the law.
AMA strongly encourages members of the media to provide examples of interactions between physician and industry in user-friendly language to help the public understand the important role that appropriate relationships between physicians and industry has in advancing the practice of medicine.

Some examples of appropriate interactions include:

Advancing Medical Knowledge - Research to develop new treatments and improve patient care is costly. It takes time and money to carry out clinical trials and get demonstrated new therapies through the approval process and into clinical use. Physicians in academic medical centers and other organizations receive funding from industry as investigators in clinical research and as consultants who help design and evaluate clinical trials or develop new medical technologies. In some cases, industry support for multiple projects is reported under the name of the academic dean or program director, which can make it seem as if the individual received a large dollar amount from industry when in fact the money financed the cost of the clinical trial and was distributed to several endeavors actually led by other physicians.

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