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Industry payments to hospitalist physicians: a 5‐year analysis of the Open Payments programme from 2014 to 2018
Author(s) -
Pakanati Krishna C.,
Siddamreddy Suman,
Nalleballe Krishna,
Thombre Vaishali,
Sheng Sen,
Veerapaneni Karthika,
Yadala Sisira,
Kapoor Nidhi,
Dandu Vasuki,
Avula Akshay,
Meegada Sreenath,
Bere Praveen
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
internal medicine journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.596
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1445-5994
pISSN - 1444-0903
DOI - 10.1111/imj.15116
Subject(s) - medicine , payment , drug industry , family medicine , actuarial science , finance , business , microbiology and biotechnology , biology
We analysed Open Payments programme data (https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov) on industry-to-physician payments to hospitalists for the years 2014 to 2018. Payments to hospitalists increased by 106.5% from 2014 to 2018 with food and beverage (38.5%) and compensation for services other than consulting (24.3%) being the highest-paid categories. Industry payment to hospitalists was highly skewed with top 10 hospitalists receiving more than 30% of the total payments during the study period. The most common drugs associated with payments were anticoagulant medications (apixaban and rivaroxaban). Industry seems to be spending a significant amount of money to increase awareness of medications among hospitalists. Identification of these trends and potential motives of industry spending is critical to address any potential physician bias.