CMS Open Payments Scraper

Pull every payment a drug or medical-device manufacturer made to a US physician or teaching hospital — directly from the federal Open Payments / Sunshine Act dataset published by CMS. Filter by physician NPI, last name, manufacturer, or year. Returns physician name, NPI, specialty, payment amount, payment date, payment nature (consulting / royalty / meals / travel / etc.), manufacturer, and the specific drug or device tied to each payment.

Built for pharma compliance officers (Sunshine Act audit), healthcare journalists (ProPublica's Dollars-for-Docs cohort), academic researchers studying physician-industry relationships, healthcare M&A, and payer integrity teams. ProPublica's alternative without the JS-rendered front-end.

Runs against CMS's official datastore query API — no auth, no rate limit ceiling for normal volume.

What you get

Field	Type	Notes
physician_npi	string	10-digit NPI
physician_first_name / physician_last_name / physician_middle_name	string	Recipient name
physician_specialty	string	Specialty taxonomy text
physician_primary_type	string	"Medical Doctor" / "Doctor of Osteopathy" / etc.
physician_license_state	string	License jurisdiction
physician_city / physician_state / physician_zip	string	Practice address
teaching_hospital_name / teaching_hospital_ccn / teaching_hospital_id	string	When recipient is an institution
noncovered_recipient_entity_name	string	Non-covered entity recipient
manufacturer_name	string	Paying manufacturer or GPO
manufacturer_id	string	CMS-assigned manufacturer ID
manufacturer_state / manufacturer_country	string	Manufacturer address
payment_amount	number	USD
payment_date	string	ISO date
payment_form	string	Cash / Stock / In-kind / etc.
payment_nature	string	"Compensation for services other than consulting", "Food and Beverage", "Travel and Lodging", "Royalty or License", "Honoraria", "Education", etc.
payment_count	integer	Number of distinct payments aggregated into this row
name_of_drug_or_biological_or_device_or_medical_supply_1	string	Specific product associated with the payment
ndc_of_drug_1	string	National Drug Code (when applicable)
program_year	integer	Reporting year
payment_publication_date	string	Date CMS published the row
change_type	string	NEW / CHANGED / UNCHANGED
record_id	string	CMS internal ID

Use cases

• Sunshine Act compliance audit — pull all of Pfizer's 2023 payments, reconcile against your internal HCP-payment ledger, surface mismatches.
• Investigative journalism — find every physician earning >$100K/yr from a single manufacturer, surface conflicts of interest in clinical guidelines.
• Academic conflict-of-interest review — every faculty member's industry payment history in one query for promotion / tenure committees.
• Healthcare M&A diligence — surface industry-payment exposure of acquired physician practices before deal close.
• KOL mapping — identify top-paid Key Opinion Leaders by therapeutic area to inform medical-affairs strategy.
• Payer integrity — flag prescribers with unusual industry-payment patterns alongside prescribing volume for further review.

Quick start

Input JSON (search by physician last name):

{
  "year": 2023,
  "payment_type": "general",
  "physician_last_name": "SMITH",
  "max_results": 100
}

Sample output item:

{
  "physician_npi": "1234567890",
  "physician_first_name": "JANE",
  "physician_last_name": "SMITH",
  "physician_specialty": "Allopathic & Osteopathic Physicians/Internal Medicine/Cardiovascular Disease",
  "physician_state": "NY",
  "manufacturer_name": "MEDTRONIC USA, INC.",
  "payment_amount": 12450.00,
  "payment_date": "2023-08-14",
  "payment_form": "Cash or cash equivalent",
  "payment_nature": "Consulting Fee",
  "name_of_drug_or_biological_or_device_or_medical_supply_1": "MICRA AV TRANSCATHETER PACING SYSTEM",
  "program_year": 2023
}

Python SDK example

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("nexgendata/cms-open-payments-scraper").call(run_input={
    "year": 2023,
    "payment_type": "general",
    "manufacturer_name": "Pfizer",
    "max_results": 500,
})
total = 0
for p in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    total += float(p.get("payment_amount") or 0)
    print(p["payment_date"], p["physician_last_name"], "->", p["payment_amount"])
print(f"Total: ${total:,.2f}")

cURL example

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~cms-open-payments-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"year":2023,"payment_type":"research","physician_npi":"1234567890","max_results":100}'

Integrations

• Zapier / Make.com / n8n — schedule monthly runs after CMS publishes the new year, push to your compliance ticketing system.
• Postgres / Snowflake / BigQuery — sync the dataset for joins against your prescribing-data, claims-data, or contracts-data warehouse.
• Salesforce Health Cloud — auto-refresh HCP records with industry-payment exposure for medical-affairs and compliance teams.

Pricing

Pay-per-event:

• Actor start: $0.00005 (one-time per run)
• Per payment record: $0.008

Cost calculator:

Records	Approx. cost
50	$0.40
100	$0.80
500	$4.00
1,000	$8.00
5,000	$40.00

Premium pricing reflects the compliance / Sunshine Act audit value — buyers in this niche typically pay 4-figure subscriptions for HCP industry-payment data products.

FAQ

Q: How fresh is the data?
A: CMS publishes once a year, typically in late June, covering the prior calendar year (e.g. June 2024 = 2023 data). The actor always picks the dataset matching your year input.

Q: What's NOT included?
A: Aggregated state-level industry-payment data (Open Payments releases line-item only). Devices that fall below the de-minimis reporting threshold ($10/payment, $100/year aggregate). Payments to non-physician prescribers (NPs, PAs) — currently outside Open Payments scope, though CMS proposed expanding this.

Q: How do I find a physician's NPI?
A: Use NPPES (https://npiregistry.cms.hhs.gov/) — or pair this actor with our NPI-lookup actor in the related list below.

Q: What years are available?
A: 2013-present (rolls forward annually). Earlier years have less complete reporting because the Sunshine Act phased in.

Q: Can I query multiple physicians at once?
A: This run = one filter. To process multiple NPIs, loop your code over the actor invocation, or contact us about a bulk variant.

Q: Are the payment amounts net of returns/refunds?
A: They are the as-reported total per the Open Payments record. CMS does not net out post-publication corrections; the change_type field flags revised rows.

Related actors from nexgendata

• Court Records Search — pair Open Payments with FCA / Sunshine Act litigation tracking.
• SEC EDGAR Search — cross-reference manufacturer disclosures with public-company filings.
• Government Contracts Search — federal contract awards alongside HCP payment exposure for life-sciences vendor diligence.

About nexgendata

Built and maintained by nexgendata — a portfolio of 160+ specialized scrapers and MCP servers covering compliance, healthcare data, civic data, lead gen, and developer tools. Need higher volume, custom output, or a private fork? Email steve_corbeil@hotmail.com.