Original articleThe Physician Payments Sunshine Act: Data Evaluation Regarding Payments to Ophthalmologists
Section snippets
Methods
The study was a retrospective analysis using the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Open Payments website and data based on primary physician specialty.4 Each data point included a single payment in United States dollars to a single physician by an entity. The primary taxonomy specialties of dermatology, neurosurgery, orthopedics, and urology were selected for comparison with ophthalmology. If several taxonomies applied to the specialty, then these were evaluated in aggregate (for
Results
For physicians with primary specialty of ophthalmology, a total of 55 996 individual payments were recorded from August 1, 2013, through December 31, 2013. None of the payments reported in this database were marked as disputed. The total amount of payments reported was $10 926 447. The mean payment amount was $195.13 (range, $0.04–$193 073), and a distribution of payment amounts by dollar range is noted in Table 1.
A total of 9855 unique physician profile identifiers received payments, an
Discussion
The Physician Payments Sunshine Act has provided a large amount of data previously unavailable for the purpose of providing transparency in medical care. However, this sizeable database is unmanageable for most people because the overall data file exceeds sizes that can be downloaded simply or managed in popular commercial programs like Microsoft Excel. The easiest way to view these data is in portions at a time, as in this analysis.
Because of the enormity of the database and the configuration
References (19)
- et al.
Do drug samples influence resident prescribing behavior? A randomized trial
Am J Med
(2005) - et al.
The Sunshine Act: effects on physicians
N Engl J Med
(2013) - et al.
The impact of disclosing financial ties in research and clinical care: a systematic review
Arch Intern Med
(2010) - et al.
A national survey of physician-industry relationships
N Engl J Med
(2007) - Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. General Payment Data with Identifying Recipient Information: Detailed...
- et al.
Effect of exposure to small pharmaceutical promotional items on treatment preferences
Arch Intern Med
(2009) - et al.
A comparison of physicians’ and patients’ attitudes toward pharmaceutical industry gifts
J Gen Intern Med
(1998) - et al.
Patients’ views on financial conflicts of interest in cancer research trials
N Engl J Med
(2006) - et al.
The surgeon as a consultant for medical device manufacturers. What do our patients think?
Spine
(2007)
Cited by (49)
Assessment of self-reported financial conflicts of interest in vascular surgery studies
2021, Journal of Vascular SurgeryCitation Excerpt :Although nonfinancial COIs are equally (if not more) prone to influencing behavior, these types of COIs are difficult to quantify and assess, and this study solely focuses on financial COIs. This study adds additional detail and clarity to a foundation of previous literature assessing the accuracy, completeness, and discrepancies in COI reporting in the surgical literature.23-33 As described in our analysis, authors who accurately disclosed payments received significantly higher median general payments.
Industry Payments in Colon and Rectal Surgery: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Open Payments Data
2020, Journal of Surgical ResearchConflicts of interest among dermatology textbook authors
2019, International Journal of Women's DermatologyIndustry Payments in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery: A Review of 112,448 Payments From a National Disclosure Program
2019, Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial SurgeryEffects of the physician payments sunshine act on the patient experience and perception of care amongst neurosurgeons: A comparative study of online PRW ratings and industry payments
2019, Clinical Neurology and NeurosurgeryCitation Excerpt :While newer, more accurate methods of identifying trends in patient satisfaction are currently being utilized by individual organizations and hospitals such as HCAHPS or Press Ganey surveys, PRWs remain the sole source of information accessible to the patient, and as such warrant study of their own despite the above noted inaccuracies [25,26]. Previous studies on the PPSA have noted neurosurgeons to have the highest percentage of total board certified physicians receiving industry payments [8–12,15–18]. Similarly, studies have also noted neurosurgery to have the received the highest median dollar amount of any specialty in 2013–2014 ($700.02), secondary only to orthopedic surgery ($1571.80) [8,9,11,12,15–18].
See Editorial on page 653.
Financial Disclosure(s): The author(s) have no proprietary or commercial interest in any materials discussed in this article.
Supported by the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, (grant no.: 5P30EY019007); Research to Prevent Blindness, Inc., New York, New York; and Columbia University, New York, New York.
The author is among physicians reported in the dataset evaluated.