A nine-year investigation of industry payments to emergency physicians in the United States between 2013 and 2021

ObjectivesTo examine the characteristics and trends in the industry payments to emergency physicians since the inception of the Open Payments Database in 2013 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. MethodsUsing the Open Payments Database between August 2013 and December 2021, this population-based cohort study examined all research and general payments made by the healthcare industry to emergency physicians registered in the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System in the United States. We performed descriptive analyses on payment data and generalized estimating equations for payment trends. ResultsAmong 50,483 active emergency physicians, 28,678 (56.8%) accepted a total of $457,640,796.73 payments from the healthcare industry between 2013 and 2021. 56.6% and 1.3% of all emergency physicians received general and research payments, respectively. 20.8% ($94.98 millions) of overall industry payments were general payments. Median general and research payments per-physician (interquartile range) were $133.21 ($44.78-$355.77) and $62,842.97 ($10,320.00-$273,285.28), respectively. Top 1% of emergency physicians received 86.2% of overall general payments, respectively. The number of physicians receiving general payments decreased by 2.9% (95% CI: -3.2 to -2.5, p<0.001) annually between 2014 and 2019 and 47.8% (95% CI: -49.8 to -45.6, p<0.001) in 2020. Although there were no significant changes in research payments before COVID-19 pandemic, the research payments significantly increased by 69.4% (95% CI: 28.9-122.7, p<0.001) in 2021 than those in 2020. ConclusionsMajority of emergency physicians accepted general payments from the healthcare industry, but the number of emergency physician accepting the general payments significantly decreased since the inception of Open Payments Database.