Review of Open Payments Received by Department of Surgery Faculty at a Large Academic Institution

Increased scrutiny of physician-industry relationships has underscored the need to better understand payment patterns across medical specialties. Our study leverages the Open Payments Database to analyze payments made to the faculty members, aiming to identify payment patterns and provide insights into the evolving financial dynamics between the industry and health care professionals.

We examined data for 136 faculty members in the Department of Surgery at our institution from the Open Payments Database (https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/) for 2023. All faculty members with at least one nonresearch payment were included. The total, mean, and median payment values were compared across the nine divisions within the Department of Surgery, by sex and faculty rank (assistant, associate, and full professor).

Substantial differences were noted between divisions; 83% cardiothoracic surgical faculty received payments, whereas no payments were recorded for pediatric surgical faculty. A major portion of the payments were made to the gastrointestinal surgical faculty amounting $305,733 (77% of the total). Nearly all faculty (95%) had payments under $10,000, and of those, 70.5% received under $1000. The largest sum of payments (41%) was made in the education category. Associate professors had the highest median payment at $502, followed by assistant professors at $298, and full professors received the lowest median amount of payment at $264.

The gap in payments is attributed to a few faculty members receiving substantial sums at the associate and full professor levels. The majority of faculty studied received small total sums, indicating that variations in compensation among surgery divisions are primarily driven by a few large payments.