OPEN PAYMENTS AND TRANSPARENCY

At Merit, we strive to be the most customer-focused company in healthcare—seeking each day to make a difference by understanding our customers’ needs and innovating and delivering a diverse range of products that improve the lives of people and communities throughout the world. To ensure the availability of innovative medical devices and technologies in the ever-changing world of healthcare, we often seek to work and innovate with other individuals and organizations, including physicians and teaching hospitals, with a common aim to improve patient health. We are fully committed to the financial transparency of these relationships; it is important to us to foster an understanding of these interactions and to prevent any real or perceived conflict of interest.

Under federal law (aka “Open Payments” or “Sunshine Reporting” laws), any payment or other transfer of value we make to a physician or teaching hospital is subject to collection and potential public reporting. Certain states have also enacted transparency and disclosure laws and regulations that often cover additional categories of healthcare providers, and are separate and in addition to the federal transparency reporting requirements. We are committed to complying with federal and applicable state laws and regulations today and in the future.

Discovering and developing new devices and technologies is a lengthy process that spans years and may include multiple clinical trials involving hundreds or thousands of patients. These studies are required to show that a device is safe and effective to treat a particular disease or condition, and to meet the strict approval requirements of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulatory authorities. Conducting clinical studies would not be possible without the involvement of physicians, clinics, and hospitals. We work with these healthcare providers to design trial programs, recruit patients, monitor safety, and report study findings. Such collaboration is critical to developing effective medical devices that advance patient care.

At Merit, we strive to be the most customer-focused company in healthcare—seeking each day to make a difference by understanding our customers’ needs and innovating and delivering a diverse range of products that improve the lives of people and communities throughout the world. To ensure the availability of innovative medical devices and technologies in the ever-changing world of healthcare, we often seek to work and innovate with other individuals and organizations, including physicians and teaching hospitals, with a common aim to improve patient health. We are fully committed to the financial transparency of these relationships; it is important to us to foster an understanding of these interactions and to prevent any real or perceived conflict of interest.

Under federal law (aka “Open Payments” or “Sunshine Reporting” laws), any payment or other transfer of value we make to a physician or teaching hospital is subject to collection and potential public reporting. Certain states have also enacted transparency and disclosure laws and regulations that often cover additional categories of healthcare providers, and are separate and in addition to the federal transparency reporting requirements. We are committed to complying with federal and applicable state laws and regulations today and in the future.

Merit is committed to funding high-quality, independent educational activities in therapeutic areas of interest to Merit that have the potential to improve patient care and health outcomes. The purpose of an educational grant is to support an independent activity that encourages an educational interchange with respect to available scientific and medical information. When Merit elects to provide an educational grant, we provide it directly to the conference organizer to reduce the overall cost of attendance of participants or to cover reasonable speaker compensation, travel, meals and accommodation expenses to healthcare professionals who are good faith conference faculty members. https://www.merit.com/about/grant-request/

At Merit, we strive to be the most customer-focused company in healthcare—seeking each day to make a difference by understanding our customers’ needs and innovating and delivering a diverse range of products that improve the lives of people and communities throughout the world. To ensure the availability of innovative medical devices and technologies in the ever-changing world of healthcare, we often seek to work and innovate with other individuals and organizations, including physicians and teaching hospitals, with a common aim to improve patient health. We are fully committed to the financial transparency of these relationships; it is important to us to foster an understanding of these interactions and to prevent any real or perceived conflict of interest.

Under federal law (aka “Open Payments” or “Sunshine Reporting” laws), any payment or other transfer of value we make to a physician or teaching hospital is subject to collection and potential public reporting. Certain states have also enacted transparency and disclosure laws and regulations that often cover additional categories of healthcare providers, and are separate and in addition to the federal transparency reporting requirements. We are committed to complying with federal and applicable state laws and regulations today and in the future.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a US federal statute that requires drug, biologic, device, and medical supply manufacturers to track payments and transfers of value to US-licensed physicians and teaching hospitals and report them to the federal government for public disclosure. The intention of these regulations is to provide transparency in the relationships between the healthcare industry and healthcare professionals.

As part of our commitment to transparency and Open Payments regulations, Merit implemented additional control processes for timely, accurate, and complete data collection and developed training programs to further educate employees on Open Payments requirements and policies and procedures. Merit is committed to reporting data to CMS “Open Payments” that are accurate, complete and timely. We will continue to work with covered recipients on questions they have pertaining to their data.

Additional information on Open Payments is available on the CMS website.