Worried about Sunshine Act compliance? Here’s a simple reporting solution

by AppZen July 26, 2021

In this edition of our “Did You Know?” series, we look at simplifying HCP/One Payment compliance to meet the requirements of the Sunshine Act. This ongoing series highlights the capabilities and benefits of AppZen Expense Audit, bringing you deeper into what makes it tick and how you can take advantage.

Complying with the Sunshine Act

The Sunshine Act requires companies carefully track and report any expenses involving healthcare professionals (HCPs). Doing so is a lot harder than it seems. To fully comply, finance managers need to ensure that front-line employees are aware of the regulatory requirements and properly disclose expenses involving HCPs.

Why is reporting expenses involving HCPs so hard?

If your employees are not diligent in their reporting, catching their errors and omissions makes the job of finance managers doubly hard. Further, finance managers would need to identify HCPs as part of every employee expense claim and merchant receipt and flag them for compliance reporting.

Collecting, tracking, and reporting HCP data needs to be simplified

Maximizing compliance with federal and state regulations for the Sunshine Act is key to avoiding fines and penalties. The only real solution is to improve the reporting accuracy of HCP attendee data for regulatory entities. Finance managers must achieve this while reducing the complexity of collecting, tracking, and reporting large amounts of HCP data. Any good solution must be simple and scalable, integrating all compliance data in one place.

How AppZen spots every HCP on expense claims so you remain compliant

AppZen’s Mastermind AI identifies healthcare professionals on expense claims for you by verifying every business guest – even when the employee has omitted marking an attendee as a healthcare professional. It does this by cross-referencing the US National Provider Identifier Registry (NPI) to spot expense reports that have a healthcare professional tagged as an attendee.

Furthermore, AppZen identifies expense report attachments that include references to healthcare professionals engaging in seminars and speaking engagements for a fee. AppZen even reads business justifications provided by employees to see if these transactions potentially include an HCP.

A simple, elegant solution for a complex, time-consuming process

Protecting the company's bottom line and its reputation has become every auditor's responsibility. Artificial intelligence that incorporates deep, finance knowledge to catch these issues within minutes of submission is exactly the solution that's needed. An AI-first workflow speeds up the auditing process and reduces the likelihood of mistakes, decreasing the chance your organization violates the Sunshine Act.

Interested in learning more? Read Sunshine Act compliance: All you need to know for a more detailed explanation of this important regulation. And don't miss this case study on a leading life sciences data provider that used Expense Audit to streamline their T&E processes and drive finance automation throughout the entire organization.

Check out this handy Expense Compliance Assessment Tool to find your compliance score and learn how to avoid violating the Sunshine Act.

CHECK YOUR COMPLIANCE SCORE

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