Public data sources for payment data widely greatly in presentation and accessibility.  There is some ambiguity in how payments are attributed, especially when the payee is a corporation or medical practice and there is more than one healthcare professional listed as a recipient. Furthermore, some companies update historical data without notice.   Consequently, we regularly monitor the data to see if it has been recently updated.

Until a unified, well defined and tested payments disclosure interface is published by the Department  of  Health and Human Services as part of the 2010 Health Act requirements and vendors start reporting data, there will remain inconsistencies in data presented. Even then errors are possible as with any reporting system. Please email us if you find any discrepancies between our data and that reported on the reporting company's web site.

The current database, developed from publicly available data cannot distinguish between healthcare practitioners or payees with the same name and they are also sometimes listed in different cities.   

 Note, our database includes only nationally reported data.  While individual states (Minnesota and more recently Massachusetts) require reports for payments made by pharmaceutical companies to medical practitioners and related entities, this data can be unintentionally duplicated by nationally reported data. Medical Data Informatics has a separate database of Minnesota and for Massachusetts 2010 data which is not publicly searchable but available to clients who use our enhanced database access and data mining services .

Updated 11/15/2011