LOS ANGELES, July 23, 2013 -- Chrome River Technologies, a leading provider of expense management and automated invoice processing software, today announced that Chrome River EXPENSE provides enhanced capabilities that support compliance with the National Physician Payment Transparency Program: Open Payments (formerly referred to as the Physician Payments Sunshine Act).
Open Payments was designed to create greater transparency and increase public awareness around the financial relationships in the health care market. The act requires pharmaceutical, biological product, medical device, medical supply companies and group purchasing organizations (GPOs) to track and report payments and any financial relationships between specific physicians and teaching hospitals. These payments include travel expenses, meals, entertainment, consulting fees, and research payments.
An annual report must be submitted to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) of all information regarding these payments that will publicly publish and conduct audits of the data submitted to ensure accuracy and transparency. Substantial monetary penalties up to $1,000,000 may be imposed on organizations that fail to report or report inaccurate data. As a result of these new regulations, healthcare and life sciences organizations will need software that uniquely identifies each physician related to certain expenses that come through their expense reporting process. Chrome River EXPENSE can now dramatically help by making it easy for organizations to track and report accurate expense payment data in order to comply with the impending regulation and avoid stiff penalties.
Chrome River’s already robust EXPENSE online service supports the assignment and allocation of expense amounts to various types of attendees and recipients of expense spend. With Chrome River’s Healthcare lookup, the entire CMS government database of providers along with all of their associated data is immediately available to expense report users, making it easy for organizations to comply with the regulations that are fast approaching in August 2013.
“We are pleased to offer a service that helps organizations in the healthcare and life science fields to track and report expense payments to comply with Open Payments,” said Dave Terry, co-founder and COO of Chrome River Technologies. “We understand the severity of the penalties that can be imposed on organizations that fail to comply with Open Payments and have designed an intuitive, easy way for those employees filing expense reports to quickly assign validated healthcare providers to any related expenses. EXPENSE has a proven, strong feature set that will simplify tracking and ensure that compliance to CMS reporting requirements are quick, easy and accurate.”
About Chrome River
Chrome River Technologies, Inc. provides expense reporting and invoice automation solutions that uniquely combine the latest available Internet technologies with a team of industry-leading implementation and support experts. Chrome River delivers immediate payback via a “Software as a Service” delivery model that requires no hardware, no software, and no long-term commitment. This unique service is easily configurable to meet the needs of organizations worldwide with complex expense management policies and collaborative approval processes. Additional information about Chrome River Technologies, Inc. and its solutions may be obtained by phone at 1.888.781.0088 or by visiting the company website at www.chromeriver.com.