The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently published their 2022 Open Payments data as well as newly submitted and updated payment records for previous program years.
The 2022 publication includes transactions that took place between January 1st and December 31st. Applicable manufacturers reported $12.59 billion in reportable payments, ownership and investment interests to healthcare providers and organizations (HCP/Os). The total amounts to $650 million more than the previous calendar year. Over 1,700 companies reported a total of 14.11 million records attributable to 588,514 physicians, 271,682 non-physician practitioners and 1,240 teaching hospitals.
The 2022 publication marks the second year of data to be released since the program expanded to include the following non-physician practitioners: physician assistants, nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, certified registered nurse anesthetists, anesthesiologist assistants and certified nurse midwives. These additional practitioner types only accounted for 3.15% of the total dollar value reported by applicable manufacturers.
According to the data published by CMS, $3.71 billion was attributed to general payments. Research payments totaled $7.58 billion, while ownership and investment interests accounted for $1.29 billion.
The above graphic illustrated the continual rise in payments made with a nature and purpose of food and beverage. Spend reported in the previous two years served as evidence of the effect that the pandemic had on the industry and in-person meals and events. There was, however, a significant increase in food and beverage spend from 2021 to 2022. The increase in spend from pre-pandemic levels can be attributed to the inclusion of non-physician practitioners, which began in 2021.
The total amount of research spend has remained steady over the past few years, with an increase from $7.5 billion to $7.6 billion from 2021 to 2022. Although the total dollar value is similar, the graph below demonstrates that the total number of transactions reported between the two years varies greatly. There were 708,938 transactions published in 2021, with that number increasing to 953,320 transactions in 2022. This may mean that more companies are starting to report their research spend at the singular transactional level rather than aggregating their research payments.
The publishing of the 2022 Open Payments data serves as another reminder for companies to review their compliance policies and procedures related to HCP interactions. Ensuring accurate and complete reporting should continue to be a priority. To learn more about how MediSpend can help support your Open Payments reporting obligations, please contact us.
The full set of CMS Open Payments data can be found here: https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/.