Industry payments to nurses not reported in federal database

Editor's Note

Though a nurse practitioner in Connecticut pleaded guilty recently to taking $83,000 in kickbacks from a drug company, the payments were not listed in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Open Payments Database.

That’s because companies are not required under the Physician Payment Sunshine Act to publicly report payments to nurse practitioners or physician assistants, even though they wrote nearly 1.4 billion prescriptions in Medicare's prescription drug program in 2013.

When CMS was asked whether payments to these providers should be reported, the agency responded that nurse practitioners and physician assistants are not covered under the Open Payments statute.

A nurse practitioner in Connecticut pleaded guilty in June to taking $83,000 in kickbacks from a drug company in exchange for prescribing its high-priced drug to treat cancer pain. In some cases, she delivered promotional talks attended only by herself and a company sales representative.