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Sunshine Day.

Boston Scientific handles Sunshine Act reporting in the cloud

MTC created a tracking and workflow application for Boston Scientific to comply with state and Federal legislative requirements

January 14, 2013
"On March 22, 2010, the Physician Payment Sunshine Provision legislation passed. The Act states that any drug, device, or medical supply manufacturer operating in the United States must report any payment or benefit given to a physician. Payments under $10 are excluded, but only if the total spent on that HCP is less than $100 annually. Companies will likely need to begin recording this information in early 2013."

Educating physicians.

Picture an educational dinner meeting with a group of physicians and experts in their field. Lobster bisque. Steak tartar. Red wine.
Recently, MTC was approached by a leading medical device manufacturer with a challenge. The sales education team for the company coordinates dinner meetings and individual educational sessions attended by medical doctors. The company pays stipends to leading physicians to share their expertise and speak about the proper use of the company's products and devices.

A pharmaceutical challenge.

Picture spreadsheets. Lots of spreadsheets. Endless, dizzying black and white words upon more words, numbers, fields and columns.
Each month, Excel spreadsheets and corresponding reports were distributed to account reps, managers, and district sales managers. Who attended? Who was paid to present? How much has each region spent this month? Whose payments are still pending? The company did a great job of capturing data, but didn't realize until it was too late Excel wasn't the best tool to manage it. The spreadsheets were cumbersome and difficult to edit. Data had to be entered multiple times. Ad-hoc reporting was impossible. Ensuring physicians were paid on-time, and creating the monthly reports became a full-time job. This often resulted in missed (or wrong) payments to speakers, and inaccurate reporting.

Surprise legislation.

Picture state and Federal legislation being enacted with little warning and vague detail. With no system in place to capture or report payments, panic sets in.
To make matters worse, several states enacted last-minute legislation requiring pharmaceutical and medical device companies to declare payments to medical professionals, and the Federal legislation is somewhat vague leaving pharma companies scratching their head on what exactly they have to track.

The company was caught in a bind. They had two months to put a system in place to capture key payment data. The system had to manage individual contracts, include a workflow-style approval process to approve/reject payments, track who attended each education session, and make these reports available to internal company representatives, as well as state governments and the
public.

Creating a solution.

MTC created a web-based system to manage the entire reporting andpayment process. With the system, new contracts are requested by account representatives, managers approve or reject, and key parties are notified.

Immediately after each speaking engagement, physicians request payment and expense reimbursement via a secure website. Required parties are notified of their need to approve or reject, and the system tracks the payment requesteach step of the way - from submission to approval to accounts payable to conclusion. At any point, parties can view the request status, thereby reducing the time needed to track down late or missed payments. No more sending invoices, manually entering data into Excel, searching for paper contracts, getting approval signatures from each manager, or manually requesting a check from accounts payable.

As importantly, residents of states requiring reporting can visit a public website and search by provider name for payments made to them.

Short turnaround time.

From initiation to conclusion, it took MTC less than six months to design, develop and install the system. The web-database ensures regulatory requirements are met, saves time and effort via workflow & reporting, and eliminates redundant data entry.

Learn more about MTC's Sunshine Act expertise here.

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617.250.3220 Massachusetts Technology Corporation
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617.250.3220