In Law360, Health Care Attorneys Examine Scrutiny of Physician-Owned Distributors

In a Law360 article published April 26, health care partner Tom Bulleit (Washington, D.C) and corporate associate Gideon Palte (New York) discussed the implication of a recent bipartisan request, from Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, for information on the agency’s oversight of physician-owned distributors of implantable medical devices (PODs). The Senators’ letter focuses on whether PODs are meeting reporting requirements of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act.

The authors explain that the letter seems to call for more action by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and HHS Office of Inspector General to increase POD Sunshine reporting. In addition, the author’s note that, coupled with its broad statement that all PODs should be reporting under the Sunshine Act, the letter should be viewed as raising the enforcement stakes for PODs and the doctors and hospitals that deal with them.

In particular, the authors suggest that the letter supports an interpretation of the Sunshine Act’s existing ownership and investment reporting obligations that would require far broader reporting than many PODs currently believe.