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Some 437 medical device companies paid out a collective $199 million in cash and other payments to physicians last year, according to a new database from the U.S. Health & Human Services Dept.
But HHS itself admits that large swaths of payment information are missing from its Open Payments database, and critics say there are major problems with the existing data, released last week as part of the Physician Payment Sunshine Act.
The database was plagued with problems even before its debut last week. Back in July, doctors reported it taking them as long as an hour, sometimes longer, to verify their identities and log in to the reporting system. And once they got that far, doctors expecting the site to clearly reflect that they don’t have relationships with pharmaceutical companies were met with a surprise. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid said a month later that it would withhold ⅓ of the data, citing data inconsistencies in company submissions. A few weeks later CMS decided to also withhold data on research grants made by pharmaceutical companies to doctors through intermediaries, such as contract research organizations.
When the website finally went live Sept. 30, it was met with instantaneous and widespread criticism. Some users encountered long delays and sometimes error messages trying to access its seven data tables. Also, the site didn’t provide consumers with an easy-to-use lookup tool, a single place to search for a doctor’s name and see all results across data files.
And federal officials disclosed this week that the Open Payments database is missing more than $1 billion in payments made between August and December 2013.
The data that has been released show that industry – mostly medical device and pharmaceutical companies – paid out a total of $3.5 billion during the last 5 months of 2013. The data includes 4.4 million payments made to more than 500,000 doctors and almost 1,360 teaching hospitals.
A MassDevice.com analysis of the data for medical device companies showed that they collectively paid out $199.0 million in some 481,000 payments. The highest single payment was a $3.0 million royalty payment made by Medtronic (NYSE:MDT); several companies reported making payments as low as 1¢ and some even reported payments worth $0. The average payment was worth $414, according to the database.
Not surprisingly, Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) and subsidiaries were by far the largest payers, at $52.6 million in more than 60,000 payments. J&J’s highest single payment, also for royalties, was $2.1 million; its average payment was $876. Here’s a look at the rest of the data for the 25 biggest medical device spenders:
| Medical device company payments to physicians Data from the CMS Open Payments database |
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| Top 25 payers | Amount | Payments | High | Low | Avg. payment |
| Johnson & Johnson | $52,588,469 | 60,059 | $2,051,712 | $0.00 | $876 |
| Medtronic | $25,039,358 | 81,066 | $2,994,278 | $0.27 | $309 |
| Smith & Nephew | $13,929,297 | 21,748 | $646,907 | $0.26 | $640 |
| Boston Scientific | $10,395,340 | 39,182 | $1,089,298 | $0.39 | $265 |
| Novo Nordisk | $5,766,191 | 68,039 | $38,250 | $0.01 | $85 |
| Stryker | $5,631,154 | 11,700 | $281,196 | $0.98 | $481 |
| St. Jude Medical | $5,291,425 | 26,607 | $66,401 | $0.01 | $199 |
| C.R. Bard | $4,881,710 | 9,536 | $749,870 | $0.37 | $512 |
| Alcon | $4,678,663 | 21,534 | $193,073 | $0.04 | $217 |
| Globus Medical | $4,664,175 | 3,207 | $107,338 | $0.57 | $1,454 |
| Eisai | $4,510,515 | 16,910 | $2,991,547 | $0.54 | $267 |
| Karl Storz | $4,487,708 | 9,558 | $95,825 | $0.01 | $470 |
| Biomet | $3,964,268 | 5,512 | $211,956 | $0.39 | $719 |
| Intuitive Surgical | $2,819,270 | 6,511 | $79,123 | $0.95 | $433 |
| Becton Dickinson & Co. | $2,680,141 | 1,489 | $1,091,081 | $2.65 | $1,800 |
| GE Healthcare | $2,392,306 | 2,242 | $515,700 | $0.64 | $1,067 |
| Covidien | $1,978,691 | 4,256 | $383,095 | $0.40 | $465 |
| Arthrex | $1,942,211 | 966 | $140,002 | $3.59 | $2,011 |
| Dentsply International | $1,801,767 | 2,996 | $612,211 | $0.53 | $601 |
| NuVasive Inc. | $1,465,189 | 68,039 | $38,250 | $0.01 | $22 |
| Abbott | $1,200,082 | 5,230 | $143,236 | $0.18 | $229 |
| Baxter | $1,003,726 | 4,245 | $40,000 | $0.00 | $236 |
| Cardiovascular Systems | $988,633 | 5,700 | $59,250 | $0.69 | $173 |
| Cook Medical | $912,116 | 391 | $619,094 | $1.02 | $2,333 |
| DJO Global | $883,482 | 1,283 | $125,000 | $1.91 | $689 |
