MASSDEVICE ON CALL — The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services missed its own end-of-the-year deadline to issue final guidelines on the Physician Payments Sunshine Act.
The healthcare regulators have missed several of their own deadlines already, adding to those a promise to issue a final implementation rule before the end of 2012.
The continued delays may mean that data collection required by the law may not begin until late this year and the data may not become public until 2014, iHealthBeat reported.
The miss caught the attention of several groups, including the American Medical Assn. and the National Physicians Alliance, which called on the Obama Administration to get back on track.
The new sunshine laws were put in place in the Affordable Care Act and would require medical device makers and other healthcare manufacturers to report financial ties to physicians and hospitals.
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