NJ Spotlight, a website that highlights “news issues and insight for New Jersey” recently created an interactive map of New Jersey doctors who received transfers of value from industry in 2015. The map, which can be found here, allows interested readers to see payments by zip code and details on those doctors who received the most money on the map, in addition to individual payments to doctors by searching the databases that are arranged by last names.
According to the United States Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), New Jersey doctors and hospitals received nearly $59 million last year from drug companies and device makers in gifts, travel, royalties, and consulting/other fees. Of that money, doctors received more than $56 million, while forty-seven hospitals received roughly $2.8 million.
In addition to the interactive map, NJ Spotlight also dissected the payments made to physicians and arranged them in lists, by physician last name. Letters A-L and hospital payments can be found here, while letters M-Z can be found here.
Hospital Receipts
Hackensack University Medical Center was the hospital that received the most in payments – $791,980 – with almost $600,000 of that in payments from Intuitive Surgical, Inc., maker of the da Vinci robotic surgery system. That roughly $600,000 in payments were paid primarily as rental or facility fees.
Morristown Medical Center received $550,000, more than half in the form of grants, with the largest amount (almost $262,000) coming from Novartis Pharmaceuticals, a New Jersey based company.
St. Joseph Hospital and Medical Center in Paterson received $284,000, with the largest payment a $176,000 grant from Gilead Sciences, Inc.
Doctor Receipts
In addition to those hospitals, thirty-one individual doctors received more than $200,000 each. More than 23,000 New Jersey doctors, dentists, optometrists, podiatrists, chiropractors, and others received payments ranging from a few pennies to $4.4 million. That large $4.4 million payout was categorized as a dividend or return on investment, paid by Par Pharmaceutical of New York to Sharad Sunder Mansukani, a Moorestown ophthalmologist. In part because of that large payout, Mansukani received the most payments of any doctor in New Jersey ($5.1 million), mostly in dividends from Par. He also received an additional $45,000 from Par and $40,000 from Immucor, Inc., of Georgia as faculty or speaking fees.
There was only one other doctor who received over $1 million in payments – Randal Betz, an orthopedic surgeon from Lawrenceville. He received payments from a total of nine companies, including $1.4 million in royalty or licensing fees from DePuy Synthes Products, LLC. Roughly $300,000 in other payments led to a total of almost $1.7 million in total payments received.
Other Payments Made
A dozen companies made over $1 million in payments, with the biggest categories for faculty or speaking fees ($16.6 million) and consulting fees ($11.3 million). Companies also spent around $10 million on food and beverages, $4.5 million on physicians’ travel and lodging, $1.3 million in grants, $1.2 million in education, and $1 million for speaking or teaching as part of a continuing medical education program. There were also more than $5 million in investment returns and nearly $5 million in royalty or licensing fees received by doctors.