Monday, July 12, 2021

CMS Publishes Program Year 2020 Open Payments Data

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On June 30^th, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published Open Payments Program Year 2020 data, along with newly submitted and updated payment records for previous program years. The data is accessible at https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/.

Open Payments is a national disclosure program that promotes transparency and accountability by making information about the financial relationships between applicable manufacturers and group purchasing organizations (GPOs) and physicians and teaching hospitals available to the public. Through this program, the public has access to a more transparent and accountable healthcare system.

Program Year 2020 Highlights

For Program Year 2020, CMS published $9.12 billion in payments and ownership and investment interests made by applicable manufacturers and GPOs to physicians and teaching hospitals. This amount is comprised of 6.38 million total records attributable to 487,152 physicians and 1,213 teaching hospitals.

Payments are reported in three payment categories: general payments, research payments, and ownership or investment interests. Payments in the three major reporting categories for Program Year 2020 are:

$2.03 billion in general (i.e., non-research related) payments
$5.97 billion in research payments
$1.12 billion of ownership or investment interests held by physicians or their immediate family members

Over the past five years, there have been consistent trends in the data. The research payment category consistently leads in total dollar value reported across the three payment categories followed by general payments and ownership and investment interest, payment categories respectively. While these trends were also the case for Program Year 2020, there was a noticeable difference in the reported dollar value within general payment category.

Applicable manufacturers and Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs) collectively reported $9.12 billion publishable payments and ownership and investment interests to physicians and teaching hospitals in Program Year 2020. Program Year 2020 accounts for payments or transfers of value made between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020.

CMS is scheduled to refresh the Open Payments data in early 2022 to reflect updates to the data made since this publication.

For more information and resources, please visit: https://www.cms.gov/openPayments

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Additional Information – Program Year 2013 Data Now Archived

Beginning with the June 2021 data publication, the Program Year 2013 data is closed and archived. Here is some information on the closing and archiving process.

- The Open Payments team evaluated the Open Payments Final Rule and determined that after a program year reaches its fifth full year of publication it will be closed and archived.

- Closed means that the specific program year will no longer be eligible for edits or data submission. For example, Program Year 2013 was closed during calendar year 2020 and reporting entities were not able to submit new records related to program year 2013. Now, Program Year 2013 is archived.

- When a program year is archived, it is no longer refreshed or searchable on the Open Payments Search Tool. Archived program years are still publicly accessible with the full dataset available for download on the Open Payments Dataset Download Page.

Contact Us

For program related questions including registration, review and dispute and data submission questions contact our Help Desk at openpayments@cms.hhs.gov or by phone at 1-855-326-8366 (TTY Line: 1-844-649-2766). The Help Desk is open Monday through Friday, from 8:30am to 7:30pm (ET), excluding federal holidays. Please note that all press inquiries should be submitted to the CMS’ Press Office.