Open Payments is the system that makes information on the financial relationships that exist between doctors and hospitals and health care manufacturing companies available to the public, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services website.
The paper will be in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics.
Patients were more likely to pay attention to exactly what the doctor was being paid for, and patients did not view all payments equally, said Joshua Perry, assistant professor of business law and ethics, in a University press release.
The other two contributors were Dena Cox, professor of marketing, and Anthony Cox, chair of the Business of Medicine MBA program at IU-Purdue University Indianapolis, according to the University.
They surveyed 881 health care consumers about different types of payments made from health care manufacturers to health care providers.
They examined how greater transparency might influence patients’ trust in their physicians and whether or not health care consumers would consult the Open Payments system to find potential conflicts of interest.
The study also suggested that the data made available by Open Payments should be available to consumers in more places than just online.
Anna Hyzy
