Recent changes to the federal Open Payments program are making it possible for researchers to track industry payments to nurse practitioners and physician assistants. A new study led by Yale School of Medicine MD candidate Wilton Sun leveraged the changes to reveal new insights into the geographic distribution of these payments, which could help inform future laws.
Open Payments is a national disclosure program intended to promote a more transparent and accountable health care system. The program houses a publicly accessible database of payments that reporting entities, including drug and medical device companies, make to various recipients.
In their study, Sun and colleagues used the government database to map all payments made to advanced-practice clinicians in 2021. They found that a greater proportion of these clinicians received payments in states which limit their scope of practice the most. The finding sheds light on the previously unknown relationship between nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and the industry leaders who pay them — a potential loophole for transparency laws that, until 2021, only covered physicians and teaching hospitals.
“The prevalence of these payments, and the growing role of these providers in health care delivery, may encourage discourse regarding their inclusion into broader conversations of conflicts of interest, disclosure, and transparency, similar to physicians,” Sun said.
Qiwei Wilton Sun, Joseph J Cavallo, Howard P Forman, Geographic distribution of general industry payments to advanced-practice clinicians, Health Affairs Scholar, July 2023.
Featured in this article
- Wilton Sun