Disclaimer: Open Payments

Gonzaba Medical Group (GMG) strictly complies with The Federal and State Anti-Kickback Statute, which prohibits offering, paying, soliciting, or receiving remuneration to induce referrals of items or services covered by Medicare, Medicaid, and other federally funded health care programs. The Anti-Kickback Statute is intended to ensure that medical providers’ judgments are not compromised by improper financial incentives and are instead based on the best interests of their patients.

As such, when you seek medical care at Gonzaba Medical Group, you can be rest assured that:

  • GMG does not offer, pay, solicit or receive remuneration (kickbacks) to induce referrals of items or services covered by Medicare, Medicaid, and other federally funded health care programs.
  • Our medical providers prescribe pharmaceuticals (medications) that are medically necessary and appropriate for the patients in their care.
  • GMG does not promote or encourage the use of any particular medical device or supplies because of payments received from a vendor or pharmaceutical company.
  • Devices, supplies or services provided are always in the best interest of our patients.

In 2013, The Physician Payments Sunshine Act (PPSA), also known as section 6002 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 requires medical product manufacturers to disclose to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) any payments or other transfers of value made to physicians or teaching hospitals. A publicly searchable database known as “Open Payments” was created to annually publish the data collected from these entities.

Open Payments is a national transparency program established by the federal government to collect and publish information about financial relationships between drug and medical device companies (referred to as “reporting entities”) and certain health care providers (referred to as “covered recipients”). These relationships may involve payments to providers for things including but not limited to research, meals, travel, gifts or speaking fees.

The Open Payments Search Tool is used to search for physicians, physician assistants, advanced practice nurses, and teaching hospitals receiving payments from drug and medical device companies. It may also be used to search for drug and medical device companies to see what payments they made to health care providers.

One of the ways that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) provides data to the public is through this search tool, which allows the public to search for covered recipients receiving payments, as well as reporting entities that have made payments. Full datasets are available for download on the Open Payments Dataset Download page.

Data is reported on the Open Payments website in accordance with the statutory authority in Section 1128 G of the Social Security Act. CMS has an impartial role in the collection and reporting of data regarding payments or other transfers of value pursuant to Open Payments. The transparency display of transactions from applicable manufacturers and group purchasing organizations to physicians, physician assistants, advanced practice nurses, and teaching hospitals does not necessarily mean any of the reported financial relationships are improper.

The purpose of the program is to provide the public with a more transparent health care system. All information available on the Open Payments database is open to personal interpretation and if there are questions about what the data means, patients and their advocates should speak directly to the health care provider for a better understanding.

The Open Payments Search Tool only displays results from the most recent seven years of program data. Archived program years are available for download on the Open Payments Archived Dataset Page.

Note: Gonzaba Medical Group is committed to the highest ethical standards, and intends to comply with all applicable laws. Thank you for making Gonzaba your provider of Choice!