Who Paid My Doc
Press & research
For journalists and researchers
Who Paid My Doc is a free, independent reader for the CMS Open Payments database — the federal record of payments that drug and medical device companies report making to U.S. clinicians and teaching hospitals. You may quote, cite and reproduce any figure on this site.
What we cover
Program years 2019–2025| Program year 2025 | Reported value | Records |
|---|---|---|
| General payments | $3,923,550,963 | 16,131,856 |
| Research payments | $9,497,235,059 | 931,959 |
| Ownership interests | $1,250,199,170 | 2,646 |
1,797 reporting companies · 1,023,318 named recipients · 1,327 teaching hospitals. The three kinds of money are never added together — see why.
Downloading the records
Every records list on the site — a doctor’s, a company’s, a teaching hospital’s, a product’s, a study’s — has a Download CSV link, as do the leaderboards and the state table. Free, no sign-in, at most 5,000 rows per file; a longer list offers consecutive files named by their row range. The first row is plain-English headers in a fixed order; the second names the source, program years, filters, rows and download date, so a file is self-describing when it is forwarded. The complete national files are published by CMS.
How to cite us
Cite the canonical URL of the page you used, and always the program year beside the figure. For a single payment, add its CMS record ID, shown on every record page and in every CSV:
Who Paid My Doc, citing CMS Open Payments, program year 2025. https://www.whopaidmydoc.com
The primary source is CMS. Where you are citing the underlying record rather than our presentation of it, cite CMS Open Payments directly — we would rather you credited the source correctly than credited us.
Permission to reproduce
The underlying data is a U.S. government work and carries no copyright. Our arrangement and presentation of it are ours, and we grant permission to reproduce figures, tables and screenshots from this site in reporting, research and teaching, with attribution and, online, a link to the page used. You do not need to ask first.
What the data does and does not show
- It is what companies reported, not what we found. We do not verify, edit or correct the underlying records.
- A payment is not wrongdoing. CMS is explicit: “Just because financial ties are reported in Open Payments does not mean anyone has done anything wrong.” These relationships are legal and common.
- Absence is not evidence. A clinician with no record may simply never have been reported on, or received only amounts under the reporting threshold.
- Names are not identifiers. About a quarter of recipient profiles share a name with another. Identify a person by name plus city, state and specialty, or by NPI.
- Figures move. CMS republishes every June and refreshes in January; disputes resolve after publication.
Five mistakes we see in coverage
- Adding the three kinds of money together. A meal, a clinical trial grant and a shareholding do not sum to anything meaningful. We never publish a combined total, and a combined figure attributed to us is a misreading.
- Treating research funding as personal income. Most of it goes to hospitals, universities and research organisations, even when a doctor is named as investigator.
- Comparing across specialties. Specialty medians differ by more than tenfold. An orthopaedic surgeon with device royalties is not comparable to a paediatrician.
- Attributing a payment to the wrong person with the same name. Always check the city, specialty and NPI.
- Quoting a figure with no program year. It cannot be checked, and it will be wrong within a year.
Figures on request
We are happy to prepare slices that are not on the site — a state, a specialty, a company, a drug, or a year-over-year series — including as a spreadsheet for your own analysis. We do not charge for this and we do not ask for editorial input in return.
Around the annual CMS publication each June, we can usually turn national and state-level summaries around within a day of the data landing. Tell us in advance if you want to be on that list.
Corrections
If a page here is wrong — a mismatched name, a broken figure, a label that misleads — tell us and we will fix it and say what changed. That is separate from the CMS dispute process, which is the only route to correcting the federal record itself; both are explained on disputes and removals.
Contact
Email [email protected]. Say what you need and your deadline; we answer press queries first. Who Paid My Doc is published by HBitTechnology, 1001 S Main St, Ste 500, Kalispell, MT 59901.
Useful starting points
- Program year 2025 in full — the national picture, by state and by nature of payment.
- Highest-paid recipients and the companies that reported paying most.
- Doctors by state and specialty, companies, teaching hospitals, products.
- Our methodology and the CMS files behind every figure.
- Plain-language guides to how the programme works.