Top 10 Ortho Company Physician Payments

The latest 2016 Open Payments update from the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has been posted for payments from industry to physicians and teaching hospitals.

We looked at the top 10 publicly traded orthopedic and spine device companies that paid a total of $434 million to 83,600 physicians and teaching hospitals in 2016. The actual number of physicians may be less due to receiving payments from multiple companies.

Average payments from companies to the physicians and hospitals were primarily for royalties (61%) and consulting or other services (19%). The vast majority of payments from orthopedic and spine companies went to physicians, not teaching hospitals.

Here, in a chart, is what we found.

Large Physician Payments

• Zimmer Biomet paid 8 physicians over $1 million.
• DePuy Synthes paid only 340 physicians, but 26 of those received over $1 million each, while 6 of those physicians received over $2 million.
• Stryker paid 9 physicians over $1 million each.
• Medtronic Sofamor Danek paid 7 physicians over over $2 million each.
• Smith & Nephew paid 8 physicians over $1 million.
• NuVasive paid 3 physicians over $1 million.
• Wright Medical: $15.1 million for 4384 docs. 68.8% royalty, 19% other.
• Globus did not pay any physicians over $500,000.
• K2M paid 1 physician over $1 million.
• Orthofix spent almost all its money on research payments.

The data base is fairly simple to navigate. Click here and simply put in the name of a company or physician and follow the prompts to see details.

Since records started being kept in 2013, over 900,000 physicians and 1,200 teaching hospitals have received a total of almost $25 billion in payments from all medical device and pharmaceutical companies. The physician research payments total includes: 1.) Payments where the company making the payment has named a physician as the primary recipient, and 2.) Payments to a research institution or entity where a physician is named as a principal investigator on the research project (i.e., received associated research funding).