Three years ago, Sen. Chuck Grassley co-sponsored the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which created a public database meant to promote transparency and accountability by providing information about payments made by drug and medical device makers to physicians and teaching hospitals.

The Department of Health and Human Services recently released a report from its Office of Inspector General that found that less than 1 percent of the 11.9 million records published in the database in 2015 were missing required data elements. 

I thought it would be interesting to search the database to see how much some of Iowa’s teaching hospitals receive from pharmaceutical and medical equipment makers.
In 2017, the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics — one of 17 Iowa teaching hospitals in the database — had 1,945 reported payments from drug and medical companies totaling more than $10.7 million. 

Of those payments, more than $9.1 million was research-related, while the remainder was in the category of “general” payments not associated with research studies, such as grants and space rental fees. By comparison, the university received less than $3 million in total payments in 2013, the first year tracked in the database.  

Among Greater Des Moines teaching hospitals, the numbers were much lower than UI’s. Mercy Medical Center-Des Moines received the most research-related dollars from drug companies — 98 payments totaling nearly $168,000 — while receiving 33 general payments totaling just under $24,000, for instance. 

Collectively, a total of 1,158 teaching hospitals in the U.S. received more than $1.75 billion in funding from drug companies last year, with general payments per hospital averaging out to about $649,000 per hospital, and research payments averaging $898,000. 

The searchable database also allows users to see how much their physicians are receiving from drug and medical equipment makers. Check it out at openpaymentsdata.cms.gov.