Boston Scientific handles Sunshine Act reporting in the cloud
MTC created a tracking and workflow application for Boston Scientific to comply with state and Federal legislative requirements
Educating physicians.
Picture an educational dinner meeting with a group of
physicians and experts in their field. Lobster bisque. Steak tartar. Red
wine.
Recently, MTC was approached by a leading medical
device manufacturer with a challenge. The sales education team for the
company coordinates dinner meetings and individual educational sessions
attended by medical doctors. The company pays stipends to leading
physicians to share their expertise and speak about the proper use of
the company's products and devices.
A pharmaceutical challenge.
Picture spreadsheets. Lots of spreadsheets. Endless, dizzying
black and white words upon more words, numbers, fields and columns.
Each
month, Excel spreadsheets and corresponding reports were distributed to
account reps, managers, and district sales managers. Who attended? Who
was paid to present? How much has each region spent this month? Whose
payments are still pending? The company did a great job of capturing
data, but didn't realize until it was too late Excel wasn't the best
tool to manage it. The spreadsheets were cumbersome and difficult to
edit. Data had to be entered multiple times. Ad-hoc reporting was
impossible. Ensuring physicians were paid on-time, and creating the
monthly reports became a full-time job. This often resulted in missed
(or wrong) payments to speakers, and inaccurate reporting.
Surprise legislation.
Picture state and Federal legislation being enacted with
little warning and vague detail. With no system in place to capture or
report payments, panic sets in.
To make matters worse,
several states enacted last-minute legislation requiring pharmaceutical
and medical device companies to declare payments to medical
professionals, and the Federal legislation is somewhat vague leaving
pharma companies scratching their head on what exactly they have to
track.
The company was caught in a bind. They had two months to put a system
in place to capture key payment data. The system had to manage
individual contracts, include a workflow-style approval process to
approve/reject payments, track who attended each education session, and
make these reports available to internal company representatives, as
well as state governments and the
public.
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