Shining Sunlight on Industry Payments in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery: The Sunshine Act

To characterize industry payments to oral and maxillofacial surgeons (OMSs) and to determine the accuracy of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payments Databases.

This was a cross-sectional study of the CMS General and Research Payments Databases in 2016 for clinicians categorized as OMSs. General payments include consulting fees, honoraria, gifts, entertainment, food and beverage, travel and education, and others. Research payments include payments associated with research. Variables collected included number of OMSs who received payments, type of and number of payments, total amount paid, geographic distribution, and proportion of funding allotted to research. The accuracy of payee categorization was determined by verifying a random selection of 5% of those categorized as "OMS" in the database with publicly available data. To assess impact on research productivity, the h-index of research payment recipients was calculated.

A total of 6,720 OMSs received industry compensation in 2016. Accuracy was 88% in the General Payments Database and 50% in the Research Payments Database. OMSs received 28,456 general payments totaling $5,971,800.79. The average number of payments and the average amount per payment were 4.27 and $1,597.60, respectively. The CMS reported total research payments of $23,592.17. The 4 verified OMSs received a total of $18,500 in research payments and had an average h-index of 3.25 (range, 0 to 8). The most common payments made were for food and beverage (80.2%), travel and lodging (5.83%), education (3.91%), compensation for services other than consulting (3.1%), and gifts (3.03%). Research accounted for 0.07% of all payments.

Although industry payments to OMSs were common, research funding was negligible. Most industry value transfers were related to food and beverage or travel and lodging. Clinicians were accurately classified in the CMS General Payments Database but not in the Research Payments Database.