Sen. Chuck Grassley wants to shine some sunlight on whether federal regulators are adequately overseeing physicians’ disclosures of ownership interests in physician-owned distributorships that supply medical devices to their practices. Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the ranking member on the committee, sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services asking what steps are being taken to determine the extent of POD compliance. “This relationship is inherently suspect because it could encourage physicians to perform unnecessary surgeries or to choose a device in which they have a financial interest for the purposes of generating more profit for the POD and thereby themselves,” the senators wrote. The topic was raised by several senators in 2011 and was the subject of a Senate hearing in 2015. The Physician Payment Sunshine Act, enacted in 2015, requires manufacturers of pharmaceuticals, biologics, medical devices and medical supplies that participate in Federal health care programs to report to CMS any transfer of value to physicians or teaching hospitals. To read a Business Record Notebook item about payments to Iowa teaching hospitals in the federal  database, click here.