U.S. physicians received more than $12 billion in payments from the pharmaceutical and medical device industry over a 10-year period.
A research letter published on March 28 in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the industry made over 85 million payments to more than 820,300 (57 percent) of eligible physicians across 39 specialties from 2013 to 2022. Nearly 94 percent of the payments were related to one or more marketed medical products.
Researchers examined data in the Open Payments database to determine what payments were made across different specialties and the medical products associated with the largest total payments. Data only included payments received for consulting, nonconsulting (such as speaker or faculty fees), travel, food, entertainment, education, gifts, grants, charitable contributions, and honoraria.
The Open Payments database is a federal transparency program that was established in 2013 out of concern that financial relationships between physicians and the industry were unduly influencing healthcare decision-making and costs.
The analysis found that payments varied considerably between specialties and among physicians of the same specialty. For example, the mean amount paid to the top 0.1 percent of physicians ranged from $194,933 for hospitalists to $4.8 million for orthopedic surgeons, while the payments to the median physicians ranged from zero to $2,339.
Orthopedic physicians received the greatest sum of payments, $1.4 billion, followed by neurologists and psychiatrists, $1.3 billion, cardiologists, $1.3 billion, and hematologists/oncologists, $825.8 million. Nearly 55 percent of pediatricians and 63 percent of infectious disease physicians received payments from the industry, while physicians practicing preventative medicine received the least sum of payments.
“From 2013–2022, pharma paid 12 billion dollars to U.S. physicians. That’s mind-boggling. Insane. That’s how silence is bought, the minds of physicians influenced, and ultimately patient care/prescribing patterns influenced,” Dr. Manni Mohyuddin, an oncologist, hematologist, and assistant professor at the Huntsman Cancer Institute.
Dr. Mohyuddin emphasized that the average payment received was low, but some physicians received a significant amount of money and have influence over writing guidelines, chairing committees, clinical trials, influencing opinions, and more.
