U.S. physicians and teaching hospitals were paid at least $3.5 billion in 4.4 million payments by drug and medical device companies between August and December 2013, according to CMS.
With the goal of improving transparency of the relationships and exchanges between physicians and pharmaceutical representatives, CMS created the Open Payments Program under the Sunshine Act. The Open Payments Program requires physicians to disclose the amount of money they receive in payments from drug and medical device companies to the government, which then makes the information available to the public.
In a recent article in The New York Times, findings developed by ProPublica revealed that Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Forest were the leading pharmaceutical companies delivering payments to physicians in 2013.
According to the report, the following 10 pharmaceutical companies made payments to the most healthcare professionals in 2013:
1. Pfizer — 142,600 physicians received payments
2. AstraZeneca — 111,200
3. Forest — 98,900
4. Johnson & Johnson — 97,000
5. GlaxoSmithKline — 85,100
6. AbbeVie — 82,900
7. Boehringer Ingelheim — 82,900
8. Merck — 81,300
9. Eli Lilly — 79,000
10. Novartis — 64,500
*Editor's note: The estimates above are based on the number of unique names, cities and states per company.
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