SOMERSET, N.J. – February 19, 2013 – In response to the recent release of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Physician Payments Sunshine Act Final Rule, Alliance Life Sciences Consulting Group (ALSCG), an innovative management and technology consultancy, announces the release of its White Paper: “Federal and State Sunshine Act Compliance Readiness”. The paper offers strategies to help covered manufacturers to proactively and comprehensively operationalize Sunshine Act requirements through value-added services.

“The Act gives manufacturers less than seven months to prepare their cross-enterprise stakeholders, business processes, transactional systems, and customer data management technologies to accurately capture and aggregate reportable spend beginning August 1, 2013,” says Animesh Gandhi, director, ALSCG. “A robust Aggregate Spend program strategy that includes governance and data stewardship components, practicable business processes, and data reconciliation and auditing capabilities is a must to ensure Sunshine Act reporting preparedness and sustainability.”

The final rule clarifies and fine-tunes a number of key points that impact customer data management and spend capture methodologies. Alliance services can:

• Create a framework to promote awareness and educate various stakeholders about the importance of enterprise-wide program oversight and sustainment
• Develop a Spend Governance Operating Model, including resource planning and data quality monitoring objectives
• Provide Spend Disclosure Compliance Training and Communications to employees regarding their transparency obligations
• Standardization of spend definitions and classifications across the organization Finance and contracting policies addressing third party/pass-through payments, spend governance, and reconciliation

“Alliance‘s best practices approach can ease the implementation burden by aligning with an organization’s specific needs and objectives,” Gandhi adds.