Open Payments Data
Database containing records of payments made by drug and medical device companies to physicians and teaching hospitals in the US.
What is Open Payments Data?
As mandated by the US Congress in the Physicians Payment Sunshine Act, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services collect information about payments made by drug and medical device companies to physicians and teaching hospitals and make these data available to the public via the Open Payments Data (OPD) search tool (1).
The data is collected to bring transparency to the financial relationships between the healthcare industry and healthcare providers and include payments to physicians and teaching hospitals for services such as research, speaking fees, meals, travel, or gifts.
This the Sunshine Act went into effect on August 1, 2013 the payment data for the previous year are published annually on June 30.
What data are available?
The OPD contains record of every payment or other transfer of value a company makes to a physician or a teaching hospital that exceeds $10 per instance or a combined $100 per year.
The database is public accessible and records are downloadable for further analysis. The CMS also provides high-level summary data on an annual basis.