U.S. Cardiologists Receive Substantial Industry Payments

The Open Payments Program (OPP), established by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), was created under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In this program, manufacturers of drugs, medical devices, and biologicals report payments and other transfers of value made to clinicians and teaching hospitals.

Using OPP data, investigators described trends in general industry payments (not including research funding) to cardiologists from 2014 to 2019. During this period, industry provided 5.5 million payments worth $1.1 billion to about 26,000 U.S. cardiologists (≈70% of all cardiologists). The value of payments declined over time, with about a 5% annual reduction. The most common categories of payments were speaker fees, consulting fees, an…