💊 CMS Open Payments Scraper — Every pharma payment to U.S. doctors — Sunshine Act disclosures, structured

Scrape CMS Open Payments — the federal Physician Payments Sunshine Act database that discloses every payment from pharmaceutical and medical-device manufacturers to U.S. physicians, dentists, and teaching hospitals. Get the doctor's name, NPI, specialty, payer firm, payment category (consulting, meals, travel, research grants), amount, and date.

One actor. One token. Real-time regulator-direct data delivered in structured JSON.

Why This Actor Beats OpenPaymentsData.cms.gov direct, ProPublica Dollars for Docs, Definitive Healthcare

• ProPublica Dollars for Docs sunset coverage: ProPublica's Dollars for Docs was a research staple but it ended dataset updates. Definitive Healthcare's analogous product costs $30K+ per seat. We read CMS's primary source at $0.005 per payment row.
• NPI-linked: Every payment is linked to the physician's NPI — the join key that lets you connect Open Payments to prescribing data, malpractice records, and hospital affiliations.
• Manufacturer to specialty join: Cross-tabulate which pharma firms pay which medical specialties the most — instant competitive intelligence for med-device and pharma sales orgs.
• Compliance-ready structure: Pre-categorised payment types (consulting, food/beverage, travel, education, research, royalty/licence, gift, charity, grant) — match your firm's internal categorisation in one mapping step.

Feature	This Actor 💊	OpenPaymentsData.cms.gov direct	ProPublica Dollars for Docs	Definitive Healthcare
Pricing model	Pay-per-result (cents per record)	Per-seat license $5K-30K/yr	Per-seat license $10K-25K/yr	Per-seat license $10K-30K/yr
Free tier	Yes (Apify free credits)	No	No	Limited search only
Real-time freshness	Minutes after source publish	End-of-day refresh	Hourly refresh	Hourly refresh
Data source	Direct from regulator	Mixed proprietary + scraped	Mixed proprietary + scraped	Mixed proprietary + scraped
API access	REST + webhooks built in	Add-on; extra licence	Add-on; extra licence	Limited
Bulk historical	Yes — date-range backfill	Limited download caps	Limited download caps	Limited download caps
Setup time	5 minutes (token + run)	Procurement + onboarding	Procurement + onboarding	Procurement + onboarding

What You Get

Every record returned by this actor is structured JSON with the following fields populated wherever the source filing provides them:

• Physician name, NPI, specialty, state, address
• Teaching hospital name, CCN (when payment is to institution)
• Manufacturer/applicable GPO name, parent corporation, FDA NDC product
• Payment date, payment amount, currency
• Payment category — consulting, food/beverage, travel, education, research, royalty, gift, charity, grant
• Form of payment (cash, in-kind, services)
• Nature of payment (e.g. compensation, honorarium, faculty)
• Associated drug / device / biological identifier
• Reporting year and CMS publication date
• Dispute and resubmission flags

The full output schema is stable across runs — safe to load into Snowflake, BigQuery, Postgres, or your data warehouse without re-mapping each refresh.

Use Cases

• Med-device and pharma sales ops — Identify high-influence prescribers in your therapeutic area for KOL programs.
• Compliance teams — Audit your firm's HCP payments against CMS-published records.
• Investigative journalists — Build a Dollars-for-Docs feed for your beat — oncology, cardiology, mental health.
• Health-policy researchers — Study payment-to-prescribing correlations across specialties.
• Hospital integrity offices — Monitor faculty consulting and research grants for COI disclosure.
• Plaintiff law firms — Source HCP relationships for off-label promotion and kickback cases.
• Patient advocacy groups — Surface physician conflicts of interest in clinical guideline development.

Quick Start

Install the Apify Python client, set your token, and call the actor:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("nexgendata/cms-open-payments-scraper").call(run_input={
    "maxItems": 100,
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

You can also trigger via cURL:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~cms-open-payments-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"maxItems": 100}'

Schedule it on Apify's built-in scheduler for daily, hourly, or every-5-minute refreshes — no infra required.

Pricing

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing on Apify. Primary event: Payment record at $0.005 per record. An Actor Start fee of $0.00005 applies per run (charged per GB of memory, minimum 1). No subscription, no seat licence, no procurement cycle — pay only for the rows you receive.

For high-volume use cases (100K+ records/month), contact us at NexGenData for volume discounts.

Sister Actors in the NexGenData Fleet

NexGenData publishes the deepest SEC/regulatory actor catalog on Apify. Pair this actor with:

Use case	Actor
Track NIH research grants — federal biomedical funding	nih-reporter-grants-scraper
Monitor FDA drug approvals	fda-drug-approvals
IRS 990 nonprofit filings — patient advocacy & medical foundations	irs-990-nonprofit-explorer-scraper
FTC enforcement actions including pharma cases	ftc-enforcement-actions-scraper
Federal Register rule filings — FDA/CMS regulatory	federal-register-rules-scraper
USAspending federal awards and contracts	usaspending-federal-awards-scraper

Browse the full 200+ actor catalog at https://apify.com/nexgendata?fpr=2ayu9b.

FAQ

Q: Is this legal?

A: Yes. Open Payments is a federal-mandated public database under the Affordable Care Act's Sunshine Act.

Q: How fresh is the data?

A: CMS publishes annually each June, covering the prior calendar year. Restatements occur for ~6 months post-publication.

Q: Can I filter by specialty or state?

A: Yes — pass specialty, state, manufacturer, or npi to narrow the dataset.

Q: Does this include nurses or PAs?

A: Starting with reporting year 2021, CMS expanded to physician assistants, nurse practitioners, certified registered nurse anesthetists, and other advanced-practice providers. We surface all covered recipients.

Q: What about device royalties?

A: Royalty/licence payments are a category — included with the payment-category field populated as 'royalty'.

Q: Can I dispute or correct a record?

A: No — the CMS dispute process is between physicians and manufacturers. Our actor reports what CMS publishes, including the dispute flag.

About NexGenData

NexGenData publishes 200+ buyer-intent Apify actors covering SEC filings, federal regulatory data (EPA, FTC, CFPB, FEC, IRS 990, FAA), private-market intelligence (Form D, IPO, 13F, 13D/G), stock screeners across 30+ exchanges (NYSE, NASDAQ, LSE, TSX, ASX, HKEX, KOSPI, SGX, B3, BSE), B2B lead generation, and competitive intelligence. All actors are pay-per-result with no seat licences and no minimum commitments.

Browse the full catalog and start a free run at https://apify.com/nexgendata?fpr=2ayu9b.

Built by independent regulatory-data engineers. Reach out via the Apify message form for custom data integrations.