Your Company and the Sunshine Act

When the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010, the face of health care in the United States went through a massive change in a number of ways, for both consumers and business owners. If you own a company, you likely know about this all too well. And one of the biggest adjustments has to do with disclosure rules.

It's called the Physicians Payments Sunshine Act. As of August of last year, all companies that deal with physicians and hospitals - such as manufacturers of medical devices, pharmaceutical firms and makers of biological products - are now required to report any payments made to doctors at health care centers and/or teaching hospitals to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which operates under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Anything more than $10 has to be reported. This includes expenses related to food, education, travel, consulting fees or charity contributions. Those that don't may be hit with a costly fine, totaling anywhere from $10,000 to as much as $1 million.

This coming September, data on payments and gifts made to physicians and teaching hospitals must be available for the public to access through a federal database. However, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, many professionals in the health care industry are not aware of some of these various requirements. That's where Certify can help.

How you can comply with Certify. Certify has the tools you need to ensure that you're in compliance with the Sunshine Act. Certify has a suite of resources geared specifically for this health care law mandate. With our innovative expense solution system, your employees can submit expenses that went to physicians through a few button clicks.

Just as one example, you and your employees can categorize physician expenses with Certify Mobile . For example, if costs were related to meals, there's a category just for that on the app. All you have to do is enter in the expense details. The search tool allows you to select the physician or physicians that the meals went to.