Before commenting on the website, here are some quick impressions about my last 2 1/2 years in Washington: fascinating, sometimes frustrating, often exhilerating, and overall just a great introduction to the arena of politics. Pew is amazing--work there if you can.
But now, let's talk Sunshine.
When I said my goodbyes to you in March of 2012, the Open Payments website was already delayed, and much of my work at Pew was aimed toward preventing that delay from stretching to infinity and beyond. The site was finally launched yesterday, one year behind schedule--not too bad.
The website is not what most people were originally anticipating. Most of us were expecting a big search box where you could type in your doctor's name. Instead, what we have are downloadable spreadsheets of varying complexity. CMS--the agency in charge of the site--plans to make it more user-friendly within a month or so.
At this point, the best way to begin to peer through that complexity is by going to Propublica's website, where you can benefit from the wisdon of the undisputed guru of physician payment data-mining, Charles Ornstein.
The main headline is that companies have spent $3.5 billion on various "transfers of value" to physicians and teaching hospitals during the last five months of 2013. That sounds like a lot of money. It is. For fun, I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation and determined that companies spent $23 million/day, or roughly $1 million/hour over that period.
But let's not go overboard. Of that $3.5 billion, about $1.45 billion was for research, and roughly $1 billion was equity that physician-investors have in drug or device companies. That leaves about $1 billion in other payments to doctors and teaching hospitals. These are the potentially dubious payments.
So what do we make of these amounts? How do we judge them? Because ultimately, the reason the Sunshine Act was passed in 2010 was that not all drug company payments are morally equivalent. We must look at the data and judge which payments appropriate and which are not.
Next post, we'll go through each category of business activity listed in the website and start to assign some moral valence to the payments.
At this point, the best way to begin to peer through that complexity is by going to Propublica's website, where you can benefit from the wisdon of the undisputed guru of physician payment data-mining, Charles Ornstein.
The main headline is that companies have spent $3.5 billion on various "transfers of value" to physicians and teaching hospitals during the last five months of 2013. That sounds like a lot of money. It is. For fun, I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation and determined that companies spent $23 million/day, or roughly $1 million/hour over that period.
But let's not go overboard. Of that $3.5 billion, about $1.45 billion was for research, and roughly $1 billion was equity that physician-investors have in drug or device companies. That leaves about $1 billion in other payments to doctors and teaching hospitals. These are the potentially dubious payments.
So what do we make of these amounts? How do we judge them? Because ultimately, the reason the Sunshine Act was passed in 2010 was that not all drug company payments are morally equivalent. We must look at the data and judge which payments appropriate and which are not.
Next post, we'll go through each category of business activity listed in the website and start to assign some moral valence to the payments.
Preview: The Open Payments website makes companies look better than I would have thought. Stay tuned.
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Welcome back!
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