Bavarian Nordic and Acubiz save time and ensure full compliance to Sunshine Act

When our customers face a challenge and come to us for help and guidance, we immediately throw ourselves over the task. Bavarian Nordic approached us as the enforcement of the regulatory requirements under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act required heavy administrative work. Specifically, the allocation of expenses to specific doctors, clinics and other types of healthcare professionals was a very time-consuming challenge for Bavarian Nordic employees, but together we found a solution that made it easier and faster to document the expenses they had in connection with visits to customers, partners, etc.

TL;DRBavarian Nordic partnered with Acubiz to solve the administrative challenge of allocating expenses to specific healthcare professionals as required under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act and the EFPIA Disclosure Code. The collaboration resulted in a digital solution that makes it faster and more accurate to document financial relationships between pharmaceutical employees and their healthcare contacts.

What is the Physician Payments Sunshine Act?

The Physician Payments Sunshine Act is a US legal provision that aims to increase transparency in the financial relations between healthcare professionals and the pharma industry. Pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors, such as Bavarian Nordic, must record and document expenses associated with medical clinics, pharmacies, researchers and other healthcare providers. Within EU is the EFPIA Disclosure Code applicable and Bavarian Nordic’s employees in Denmark and other European countries is therefore governed by this.

Financial relationships between healthcare professionals and the pharmaceutical industry are common and can include everything from meals to consulting or speaker fees to direct research funding. To develop new medicines that improve health and save lives, pharmaceutical companies need to collaborate with outside experts, including researchers who support the scientific development of new preparations and physicians who understand how they’ll be used in clinical practice. The purpose of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act is to make financial relationships between the individual healthcare professional and the pharmaceutical manufacturer more transparent and hence heighten the credibility.

What challenge did Bavarian Nordic face?

Bavarian Nordic’s employees are frequently in contact with medical clinics, pharmacies, research scientists etc. and in this context, they acquire expenses which must be documented according to both their own company policies and the Physician Payments Sunshine Act. Bavarian Nordic uses Acubiz for expense management and therefore asked us if we could help make it easier for them to search for the right healthcare professional when registering an expense.

The list of healthcare professionals that Bavarian Nordic is in contact with worldwide is long. In fact, so long that it includes more than hundred thousand healthcare professionals. The list has so far been managed and updated in the Acubiz One mobile app itself as loading dimensions for selection in a list. This solution has worked, but it’s time-consuming to both load the dimensions for the users and to update the many dimension values for the finance department.

LiveSearch became the solution

Working with so many values, it’s not a surprise that the speed of loading and updating them takes time when launching Acubiz One. Together, Bavarian Nordic and Acubiz came up with a solution where all dimension values are maintained and accessed live in the cloud – directly from the Acubiz One mobile app. We call the solution “LiveSearch” and it makes it significantly faster and easier to search for the individual healthcare professional – on-demand.

LiveSearch benefits Bavarian Nordic. But it is also useful to a large number of our other customers. LiveSearch is particularly relevant and valuable for project-oriented companies with many projects, cases, customers, clients etc. where expenses are to be attached. Employees will experience a significantly faster administration time on the individual expense registration.

The LiveSearch feature is unique in the Expense Management category and enables extremely fast and efficient end-to-end processing of expense transactions, where complex and comprehensive allocation routines for the individual employee is part of the process.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Physician Payments Sunshine Act and who does it apply to?

The Sunshine Act is a US law requiring pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors to record and document all financial relationships with healthcare professionals, including meals, consulting fees, and research funding. Within the EU, the EFPIA Disclosure Code applies equivalent transparency requirements to pharmaceutical companies operating in Europe.

What challenge did Bavarian Nordic face with Sunshine Act compliance?

Bavarian Nordic employees frequently interact with medical clinics, pharmacies, and researchers. Allocating each expense to the correct healthcare professional or institution was highly time-consuming to do manually. The volume of interactions made this a significant administrative burden that needed a systematic digital solution.

How did Acubiz help Bavarian Nordic comply with the Sunshine Act?

Acubiz worked with Bavarian Nordic to build a configuration where employees could easily assign expenses to specific healthcare professionals at the point of registration. This made the documentation process faster and more accurate, reducing the manual effort previously required to compile disclosures.

What types of expenses must pharmaceutical companies disclose under the Sunshine Act?

Disclosures must cover any financial benefit provided to healthcare professionals, including meals, accommodation, travel, speaker fees, consulting fees, and research funding. The intent is to make visible any financial relationship that could potentially influence clinical decisions or prescribing behavior.

Can a standard expense management system handle Sunshine Act requirements?

Not without appropriate configuration. Sunshine Act compliance requires the ability to tag each expense against a specific healthcare professional or institution at registration, and to produce reports in the format required for regulatory disclosure. This needs purpose-built configuration, which is what Acubiz developed for Bavarian Nordic.