CMS released Open Payments data for 2015 showing that healthcare industry manufacturers and companies reported $7.52 billion in payments as well as ownership and investment interests to physicians and teaching hospitals.
Some South Carolina physicians say that the public may be misinterpreting the payments information, according to The Post and Courier.
Here are five notes:
1. Vincent Pellegrini, MD, an orthopedic physician at Charleston-based Medical University of South Carolina, notes that the database needs to better explain physicians' relationships with device companies.
2. The database shows that in 2015, Dr. Pellegrini was paid $595,501 in royalties for product development by DePuy Synthes. However, he hasn't worked with the company in four years and the royalties are being paid for work done years ago.
3. Aquilla Turk, DO, another MUSC physician, received $1.36 million from Medtronic in 2015. But, the database does not make clear that the payment was due to investments he made in a startup that was later bought by Medtronic.
4. Some physicians have not seen any inaccuracies in the data. An MUSC gastroenterologist, Peter Cotton, MD, says that the "transparency is a good thing," and he has not seen any mistakes in the data provided.
5. The 2015 data set represents the second full year of data available on the CMS Open Payments website.