2301 - Trends in General Industry Payments to Radiation Oncologists: 2019-2024

Purpose/Objective(s): The Open Payments program, which originally launched in 2013, publicly reports financial relationships between industry and healthcare practitioners. Prior studies have described trends in payments across various specialties before the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we provide an updated analysis of practitioner payments, specifically to radiation oncologists (ROs), from 2019 to 2024.

Materials/Methods: Data on practitioner payments were obtained from the publicly available Open Payments database (https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/). We extracted general payments for all specialties, including radiation oncology, for the years 2019 through 2024. We then calculated summary statistics, including total payments, number of entries, unique recipients, and breakdowns by payment type and by drug and medical device.

Results: Across the study period, total practitioner payments (all specialties) decreased, from $3,718,892,877.80 in 2019 to $3,313,801,737.49 in 2024. Specifically, RO payments declined from $9,689,172.77 (0.26%) to $6,032,948.94 (0.18%). Total RO payment entries increased from 25,820 to 29,504 and unique RO recipients increased from 3,197 to 3,291. In 2024, the distribution of RO payments shows that most were for consulting fees ($2,449,876.26, 40.6%), followed by speaker/faculty/honoraria-related payments ($1,853,748.95, 30.7%) and meals ($991,524.27, 16.44%). Travel and lodging accounted for $5,820,06.61 (9.6%) and grants for $121,759.94 (2.0%). Gifts, education, debt forgiveness, entertainment, and acquisitions each accounted for <0.5% of total payments. The total spending on the top ten drugs and medical devices among ROs was $1,274,293.37 (21.1%). The largest share of payments were for Space OAR/SpaceOAR VUE System - 10mL ($342,997.24, 5.7%) and Imfinzi ($252,459.64, 4.2%), followed by Pylarify ($181,236.41, 3.0%), Libtayo ($158,210.84, 2.6%) and Optune ($112,478.27, 1.9%).

Conclusion: From 2019 to 2024, total practitioner general payments decreased, including among ROs. In 2024, consulting fees accounted for the largest share of radiation oncology payments, and a small number of drugs and medical devices contributed disproportionately to total drug- and medical device-related payments. Payments to ROs constitute a very small share of all payments recorded in the Open Payments Database.