Physician Payments Sunshine Act: Open Payments is Missing a Lot of Data

Open Payments currently presents a vague portrait of how pharmaceutical and device manufacturers interact with physicians. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) noted on Monday that $3.3 billion out of $4.6 billion total payments from industry are either missing or de-identified. View their Fact Sheet here. Upon release of the database on September 30, Open Payments showed $3.5 billion in payments in various categories. This included 1.7 million records, totaling $2.2 billion, which were de-identified. On Monday, CMS announced that they actually withheld an additional $1.1 billion from the database. This makes the total $4.6 billion in industry payments from August – December 2013. While the missing $1.1 billion includes $551 million in research payments for new drugs (which were allowed a four year reporting delay), $514 million in payments have not been published due to “unresolved disputes at the end of the review period.” Physicians in the Database CMS states that 546,000 physicians are identified in the Open Payments database. According to the National Bureau of Labor Statistics, the total physician population (as defined by CMS) is 926,400: MD's/DO's 691,400 Dentists 146,800 Chiropractors 44,400 Optometrists 33100 Podiatrists 10,700     Total 926,400 Thus, just under 59% of physicians have some relationship with industry. Yesterday we noted that tiny payments make up the majority of data in the O...
Source: Policy and Medicine - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs