Industry Payments to Plastic Surgeons: What Has Changed Over the Last 6 Years Following Implementation of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act?

Abstract

The Open Payments Program, as designated by the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, is the single largest repository of industry payments made to licensed physicians within the United States. Though sizeable in its dataset, the database and user interface are limited in their ability to permit expansive data interpretation and summarization. The authors sought to comprehensively compare industry payments made to plastic surgeons with payments made to all surgeons and all physicians to elucidate industry relationships since implementation. The Open Payments Database was queried between 2014 and 2019, and inclusion criteria were applied. These data were evaluated in aggregate and for yearly totals, payment type, and geographic distribution. A total 61,000,728 unique payments totaling $11,815,248,549 were identified over the 6-year study period; 9089 plastic surgeons, 121,151 surgeons, and 796,260 total physicians received these payments. Plastic surgeons annually received significantly less payment than all surgeons (P = 0.0005). However, plastic surgeons did not receive significantly more payment than all physicians (P = 0.0840). Cash and cash equivalents proved to be the most common form of payment; stock and stock options were least commonly transferred. Plastic surgeons in Tennessee received the most in payments between 2014 and 2019 (mean $76,420.75). California had the greatest number of plastic surgeons who received payments (1452 surgeons). Plastic surgeons received more in industry payments than the average of all physicians but received less than all surgeons. The most common payment was cash transactions. Over the past 6 years, geographic trends in industry payments have remained stable.