On June 30, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published the 2015 Open Payments data of financial transactions between drug and medical device makers and health care providers. The data includes information about 11.9 million financial transactions attributed to over 600,000 physicians and more than 1,100 teaching hospitals nationwide, totaling $7.52 billion.

The Sunshine Act requires drug and medical device manufacturers and group purchasing organizations to report their financial interactions with licensed physicians – including consulting fees, travel reimbursements, research grants and other gifts.

This is the third year that Open Payments data has been published online by CMS.

Before this data is published each year, physicians are given an opportunity to review and dispute records attributed to them. The review and dispute process is voluntary, but encouraged. If physicians disagree with what has been reported about them, they can initiate a data dispute and work with the reporting entity to resolve the discrepancy before the data is published.

For the 2015 data just published, 0.13 percent (16,653 records) were disputed, accounting for 1.95 percent of the total value of published records.

To view the Open Payments physician payment dataset, click here. To view the searchable public site, click here.