• Vasudha Goel, Amol M Patwardhan, Mohab Ibrahim, Yan Yang, Eellan Sivanesan, Ratan K Banik, Clarence Shannon, and Hariharan Shankar.
• Department of Anesthesiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
• Pain Med. 2021 Jun 4; 22 (6): 1376-1386.

ObjectiveTo analyze industry payments to pain medicine physicians in the United States.DesignRetrospective cohort study using publicly available databases.SubjectsThe study includes U.S. pain medicine physicians (PMPs) with reports in the Open Payments program from 2013 to 2018.MethodsThe Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Open Payments program was analyzed for general, investment, and ownership payments to PMPs reported from 2013 to 2018. The nature, type, and geographic variation of payments were analyzed.ResultsThe main findings of the study are as follows: 1) Payments made to PMPs constituted a small proportion of the payments made to all physicians in the United States, and the number of transactions and the total dollar amount seem to have decreased from 2016 to 2018. 2) The median number of payments among physicians with reported payments was around 4 (interquartile range: 18), and the majority of them were under $20. 3) The majority of payments were for in-kind items and services (85%) and were made for food and beverages (91%), travel and lodging (5.5%). 4) Some of the ownership and investment interest payments exceeded $500,000. 5) The top five drugs associated with physician payments included medications with opioids. 6) A very small minority of payments were made for entertainment or gifts. 7) A third of PMPs with reports had payments reported under more than one taxonomy.ConclusionsOverall payments made to PMPs seem to be decreasing since 2016. The majority of the payments are made for the food, beverage, and travel categories. Public and physician awareness of the Open Payments system reports is essential to promote transparency and to minimize adverse effects of financial relationships on patient care.© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

15 keywords...

hide…