The federal government today launched a highly anticipated website detailing at least $3.5 billion in financial ties in a five-month period between medical device and drug companies and physicians and teaching hospitals. The Open Payments websiteis the first public repository of national data describing financial relationships between industry and healthcare providers. Critics of these payments say these payments can inappropriately influence clinical decisions.
The records are organized into three categories: general payments, research payments and physician ownership and investments. Manufacturers made 4.4 million payments to 546,000 physicians and 1,360 teaching hospitals from Aug. 1, 2013 to Dec. 31, 2013. To see how much a physician received during this period, click here. More records will be published for this period at a later date.
Source: Jaimy Lee, Modern Healthcare [9/30/14]
For those that are interested, Dr. Metaxas attended an Arthrex Arthroscopy Training Course in San Francisco at the St. Francis Hotel on Augsut 26, 2013, the tuition of which was sponsored at a value of $2,200.