FCW.com: “A new government database that debuted Sept. 30 offers information on financial connections between doctors and teaching hospitals and pharmaceutical firms and medical device manufacturers. The open-data play by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was mandated under provisions of the 2010 health care overhaul. The inaugural data dump covers $3.5 billion in payments from firms to health professionals between Aug. 1 and Dec. 31, 2013. The data was collected from manufacturers over the summer, and matched by CMS to physicians and teaching hospitals. The data allows patients, watchdog groups, and others to map relationships between industry and care providers. Right now, the picture provided by the data available at the Open Payments site is limited. According to CMS, about 40 percent of the 4.4 million records are de-identified – they don’t include the name of the provider in question because of administrative delays or because the data in question is in dispute. CMS plans to have fully identifiable data in place by June 2015.”