Who’s paying your doctor?
Thanks to the Physicians Payments Sunshine section of The Affordable Care Act anyone can find out if their doctor is receiving payments or gifts from pharmaceutical companies. The transparency program is a national resource for patients to know more about the relationships between physicians, teaching hospitals, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Open Payments is a search engine created by the federal government that keeps tracks of the amount of money your doctor takes in and even breaks it down in detailed categories like meals, speaking fees and travel. Pharmaceutical companies are required by law to report this information and through the website the public has access to it.
In order to find the amount of money your doctor takes in you need to know just two pieces of information -- your doctor’s first name and their last name. The data available begins with reporting from 2013.