Characterizing Industry Payment to Trauma Surgeons Under the Open Payments Program

The Open Payments Program was launched in 2013 by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This initiative aims to increase transparency in the health-care industry and reduce potential bias in medical decision making by exposing financial relationships between health-care providers and industry. This study seeks to characterize payments to trauma surgeons between 2017 and 2023.

All physicians listed as trauma surgeons within the Open Payments Program database were included. To capture trauma surgeons who may be listed as a different specialty within the database, the membership of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma and the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma as of July 2024 was also abstracted. Payments were analyzed and descriptive statistics performed by physician, payment type, industry payer, year, and geography.

A total of 2444 trauma surgeons were identified; of which 2205 received at least one nonresearch industry payment. Total payments were $13,274,335.85 over the course of 7 years. The mean total payment for individual trauma surgeons was $6022.84 ± 2039.04. The 50 highest grossing individual surgeons received 55.8% of all monies paid. Less than a quarter of all funds were spent on education. Out of 497 companies that made payments, Intuitive Surgical was the top contributor and accounted for 33.6% of all monies paid.

This is the first study to characterize industry payments to trauma surgeons. Further studies are needed to understand how these relationships may or may not impact medical decision making for trauma surgeons.