CMS Open Payments Crawler - Physician Pharma Payment Data

Extract physician payment records from the CMS Open Payments database (Sunshine Act). Collect payments from pharmaceutical and medical device companies to physicians — including dollar amounts, payment types, payer companies, associated products, and physician details across all 50 U.S. states.

CMS Open Payments Crawler Features

• Query three datasets: General Payments (consulting, food, travel, speaking fees), Research Payments (research funding), and Physician Ownership (ownership/investment interests)
• Filter by state, physician specialty, payer company name, payment type, and minimum dollar amount
• Covers program years 2018 through 2024 — over 15 million General Payment records per year
• Reads the official CMS DKAN API directly — structured JSON, no HTML parsing, no proxy required
• Normalizes field names across all three dataset types into a unified output schema
• Pay-per-event pricing at roughly $0.001 per record

Who Uses CMS Open Payments Data?

• Healthcare compliance teams — monitor pharma payments to physicians for conflict-of-interest audits and Sunshine Act reporting
• Pharmaceutical market researchers — analyze payment patterns by specialty, state, or company to understand industry spending trends
• Journalists and watchdog organizations — investigate financial relationships between drug makers and prescribing physicians
• Medical device sales teams — identify which physicians receive consulting fees, speaking engagements, or research funding from competitors
• Academic researchers — study the correlation between industry payments and prescribing behavior at scale
• Legal professionals — gather payment evidence for litigation involving pharmaceutical marketing practices

How CMS Open Payments Crawler Works

1. You select a dataset type (General, Research, or Ownership) and a program year.
2. The crawler queries the CMS DKAN API with your filters — state, specialty, payer name, payment type — using server-side conditions where possible.
3. Results are paginated at 500 records per request, transformed into a clean unified schema, and filtered client-side for minimum payment amount.
4. Each record includes the physician name, NPI, specialty, payer company, dollar amount, payment type, associated product, and a unique CMS record ID.

Input

Basic: Get general payments for a state

{
  "datasetType": "general",
  "programYear": "2024",
  "states": ["CA"],
  "maxItems": 100
}

Filter by payer company

{
  "datasetType": "general",
  "programYear": "2023",
  "payerName": "Pfizer",
  "states": ["NY"],
  "maxItems": 50
}

Research payments by specialty

{
  "datasetType": "research",
  "programYear": "2023",
  "physicianSpecialty": "Allopathic & Osteopathic Physicians|Internal Medicine",
  "maxItems": 200
}

High-value consulting fees

{
  "datasetType": "general",
  "programYear": "2024",
  "paymentType": "Consulting Fee",
  "minPaymentAmount": 1000,
  "maxItems": 50
}

Input Parameters

Field	Type	Default	Description
programYear	string	"2024"	Program year: 2018 through 2024
datasetType	string	"general"	Dataset: general (payments), research (funding), or ownership (investment interests)
states	string[]	[]	Filter by recipient state (two-letter codes). Leave empty for all states.
paymentType	string	""	Filter by payment type: Consulting Fee, Food and Beverage, Travel and Lodging, Education, Gift, Honoraria, Grant, and others
payerName	string	""	Search by pharmaceutical or device company name. Supports partial match.
physicianName	string	""	Search by physician last name. Supports partial match.
physicianSpecialty	string	""	Filter by specialty: Internal Medicine, Orthopedic Surgery, Dermatology, Family Medicine, and 11 others
minPaymentAmount	number	0	Return only payments at or above this dollar amount
maxItems	integer	100	Maximum number of records to return
proxyConfiguration	object	{}	Proxy settings. Not required — this is a government API with no geo-restrictions.

CMS Open Payments Crawler Output Fields

Example Output

{
  "physician_name": "JOHN A SMITH MD",
  "physician_npi": "1234567890",
  "physician_specialty": "Allopathic & Osteopathic Physicians|Internal Medicine",
  "recipient_city": "LOS ANGELES",
  "recipient_state": "CA",
  "payer_name": "Pfizer Inc.",
  "payment_amount": 2450.00,
  "payment_type": "Consulting Fee",
  "payment_date": "06/15/2024",
  "product_name": "ELIQUIS",
  "product_type": "Drug",
  "teaching_hospital_name": "",
  "program_year": 2024,
  "payment_count": 1,
  "record_id": "1058723"
}

Field Reference

Field	Type	Description
physician_name	string	Full name of the physician or covered recipient
physician_npi	string	National Provider Identifier (10-digit unique physician ID)
physician_specialty	string	Medical specialty (e.g., Internal Medicine, Orthopedic Surgery)
recipient_city	string	City of the covered recipient
recipient_state	string	State abbreviation of the covered recipient
payer_name	string	Pharmaceutical or medical device company making the payment
payment_amount	number	Dollar amount of the payment or transfer of value
payment_type	string	Nature of payment: consulting, food/beverage, travel, research, royalty, ownership, etc.
payment_date	string	Date the payment was made (MM/DD/YYYY)
product_name	string	Associated drug, device, or biological product name
product_type	string	Product category: Drug, Device, Biological, or Medical Supply
teaching_hospital_name	string	Teaching hospital name, if the payment was made to one
program_year	number	Reporting year of the payment disclosure
payment_count	number	Number of individual payments aggregated in this record
record_id	string	Unique record identifier from CMS

CMS Open Payments Data Coverage

Dataset	2024 Records	2023 Records	Description
General Payments	15.4M	14.7M	Food, travel, consulting, speaking, gifts, royalties
Research Payments	757K	~750K	Research funding from pharma/device companies
Physician Ownership	4.6K	~4K	Ownership and investment interests

Data is published annually by CMS for the previous reporting period. The crawler covers 2018 through 2024.

FAQ

What is the CMS Open Payments database? The CMS Open Payments database tracks payments from pharmaceutical and medical device companies to physicians and teaching hospitals, as mandated by the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (part of the Affordable Care Act). CMS publishes this data annually at openpaymentsdata.cms.gov.

How much does CMS Open Payments Crawler cost to run? Roughly $0.001 per record on pay-per-event pricing. Extracting 10,000 records costs about $10. The actor runs on 256 MB of memory by default and processes approximately 10,000 records per minute.

Do I need proxies? No. The CMS Open Payments API is a public government service with no authentication, no CAPTCHA, and no geo-restrictions. Proxy support is disabled by default.

What is the difference between the three dataset types? General Payments cover direct transfers of value — consulting fees, food, travel, speaking engagements, gifts, and royalties. Research Payments cover funding for clinical research. Physician Ownership covers ownership stakes and investment interests that physicians hold in pharmaceutical or device companies.

Can I search by company name? Yes. The payerName field supports partial match, so searching "Pfizer" returns payments from any entity with "Pfizer" in the name. Combine with state and specialty filters to narrow results.

How current is the data? CMS publishes Open Payments data annually, typically in January for the previous reporting year. Program year 2024 is the most recent available dataset.

Can I get data for a specific physician? Use the physicianName field to search by last name (partial match). Combine with states or physicianSpecialty to narrow results when the name is common.

Need More Features?

Need custom fields, filters, or a different healthcare data source? File an issue or get in touch.