Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services: Open Payments Program Report - The Physician Idols of America
This is a data analysis performed on the CMS Open Payments "General Payments" 2020 dataset for the DATA 118 class offered by the University of Chicago. The analysis was completed on February 22nd of 2022.
The Open Payments database contains reports of payments to recipients like physicians and hospitals from industry manufactures for medical supplies such as drugs or medical equipment. Physicians may be paid by companies for many reasons, one of the most interesting being: “payments that a company makes to physicians for speaking, training, and education engagements that are not for continuing education.” This analysis explores data on the U.S. based physicians who have been contracted the most and aims to answer some questions about the physicians and their work such as:
• What companies and entities are contracting these speakers?
• How substantial is the compensation for these speakers when compared to less contracted physician speakers?
• What subjects have these physicians spoken about?
• Who is 2020’s American Physician Idol?