US pharma and device firms paid doctors/hospitals ~$3.5 billion, CMS data show

As part of its ongoing effort to increase transparency and accountability in health care, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) yesterday released the first round of Open Payments data to help consumers understand the financial relationships between the health care industry, and physicians and teaching hospitals.

This release is part of the Open Payments program, created by the Affordable Care Act, and lists consulting fees, research grants, travel reimbursements, and other gifts the health care industry – such as medical device manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies – provided to physicians and teaching hospitals during the last five months of 2013. The data contains 4.4 million payments valued at nearly $3.5 billion attributable to 546,000 individual physicians and almost 1,360 teaching hospitals. Future reports will be published annually and will include a full 12 months of payment data, beginning in June 2015.

Research accounted for ~$1.5 billion