A unique researcher identifier for the Physician Payments Sunshine Act.

THE PHYSICIAN PAYMENTS SUNSHINE ACT (PPSA) PROMises a new era of transparency for the US health care system. Signed into law on March 23, 2010, the PPSA is part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009. The PPSA requires medical product companies to report to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) a range of “transfers of value” to covered recipients (physicians and teaching hospitals). With some exceptions, these transfers and their value will be publicly disclosed. The PPSA constitutes an important step toward comprehensive, user-friendly, point-of-need availability of information about physicians’ and investigators’ financial relationships with industry. Ideally, any user of a major biomedical research database such as PubMed, clinicaltrials .gov, or NIH RePORTER should be able to access a Web page listing an author’s, investigator’s, or grantee’s financial relationships by following an embedded hyperlink. However, limitations of the PPSA will prevent realization of this ambitious vision. Straightforward, inexpensive measures to remedy these omissions would greatly enhance the value of the PPSA.