The Influence of the Sunshine Act on Industry Payments to United States Orthopaedic Sports Medicine Surgeons.

Purpose: The purpose of the present study is to investigate trends in overall payments to orthopaedic sports medicine surgeons reported by the Open Payments Database (OPD) over the 6 full years of available data (2014-2019).

Methods: A retrospective review of industry payments to United States sports medicine trained orthopaedic surgeons from 2014 to 2019 was performed using the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services OPD. Total payments and subtype payments were analyzed for yearly trends. Regional analysis was also performed. The primary outcome was the overall trend in total median payments (defined as the median total payments per surgeon per year), which was assessed via the Jonckheere-Terpstra test. Descriptive statistics include medians with interquartile ranges. P values < .05 were considered statistically significant.

Results: From 2014 to 2019, there were a total of 1,941,772 payments to 12,816 sports medicine orthopaedic surgeons. The median payments to surgeons demonstrated a significant upward trend (P < .001). The total number of payments (r = 0.002; P = .99) did not significantly correlate with changing year. The top 5 compensated surgeons received 45.8% of all industry contributions with a median total payment of $9,210,974.06 (interquartile range: 25,029,951.46). The majority of industry contributions in the top 5 earners were attributed to royalties and licenses (98.7%). Across the study period, 89.4% of the total orthopaedic sports medicine surgeons received a yearly total payment less than $10,000, which made up 8.3% of the total industry payment sum. Those receiving a yearly total payment greater than $500,000 accounted for 0.3% of surgeons but received 53.4% of the sum payments. We found a yearly increasing trend in payments in all regions including the Midwest, South, Northeast, and West (P < .001, P < .001, P < .001, and P = .006).

Conclusion: Despite the transparency of reporting mandated by the Sunshine Act, orthopaedic sports medicine surgeons have continued to maintain industry relationships with a notable disparity in distribution.

Clinical Significance: Our analysis suggests continued relationships among sports medicine surgeons and industry. Future research is needed to determine how this impacts medical practice in the United States.