Category: Pharmaceutical Industry

Sunshine Act Data for Industry Payments to Physicians and Teaching Hospitals Now Available.

Data for Kentucky extracted and available for use below.

Quick overview provided.

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the data yesterday for the first iteration of its long-awaited, much-debated, and rollout-impaired Open Payments to Physicians Program, commonly referred to as the Sunshine Act. Federal law now requires that pharmaceutical and medical device companies disclose a variety of cash payments and other transfers of value to physicians and teaching hospitals. The rationale is the justifiable concern that such payments influence the practice of medicine in an undesirable manner. The Open Payment Programs and other releases of previously hidden information are in response to the demands of the public for more transparency and accountability in healthcare finance and delivery. I think is it a good idea, but we are going to have to learn as we go how to understand and use the information.

Some preliminary observations from “Identified” General Payment File only:
• 4069 Kentucky physicians received a total of $6.6 million in payments for non-research purposes.
• One physician received $230,609.
• An additional 6 physicians received more than $100,000.
• 131 physicians received more than $10,000.
• 50 physicians received more than 100 individual payments each.
• On the other end of the scale, 1810 physicians received less than $100.

Here is a simple scattergram of total payment amounts to each individual KY physician. The curve is heavily skewed to the left. A few are major recipients, most are at the free lunch level. Not included here or in the bullets above are the the many payments from the “de-identified” file for which the names of the physician or hospital are not yet resolved. (See below) Continue reading “Sunshine Act Data for Industry Payments to Physicians and Teaching Hospitals Now Available.”

Rocky Rollout of Sunshine Act— The Open Payments Program for Physicians.

Another Accountable Care Act initiative with website problems!

For many years now, many public policy concerns have been expressed about the huge amounts of money that pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers give directly to physicians and academic medical centers. An old drug detail-man in Kentucky once told me his company gave Cadillacs to the highest prescribers of his drugs. I doubt that things are that blatant anymore, but so much money flows into individual and departmental pockets that it is difficult to assemble members for expert panels of the FDA, CDC, or other policymaking organizations who are not receiving money from drug and device makers. Full disclosure was supposed to solve the problem, but that does not work. The Open Payments initiative is part of a larger movement for greater transparency and accountability. I plan to write more about this, including my own experience over the years interacting with Pig Pharma and Big Devices.

Continue reading “Rocky Rollout of Sunshine Act— The Open Payments Program for Physicians.”