Open Payments database notice
Federal law requires that payments from drug and medical device manufacturers to physicians and teaching hospitals be reported and published for anyone to read. This notice tells you where that public database is and how to search it.
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- Adults 18+ · dual-diagnosis welcome
What it is
A federal database of industry payments to clinicians
The Physician Payments Sunshine Act directs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to collect and publish information about financial relationships between the companies that make drugs and medical devices and the clinicians who prescribe or use them.
The result is Open Payments, a searchable public database covering every reporting manufacturer in the country. Its purpose is transparency: the relationships exist, they are ordinary in medicine, and the public is entitled to see them rather than guess at them.
Who reports
Manufacturers of drugs, medical devices, and biologics, along with group purchasing organizations, report the payments they make. The clinicians who receive them do not file the reports.
What gets reported
Consulting fees, speaking fees, research payments, travel, meals, gifts, and ownership or investment interests. Small payments are reportable — the statutory threshold begins in the range of ten dollars per payment and is adjusted for inflation each year.
Who is covered
Physicians and teaching hospitals, and since 2021 physician assistants, nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, certified registered nurse anesthetists, and certified nurse-midwives.
Why this page exists
Because you should not have to ask us for it
We publish this notice so the link to the federal database is easy to find, and so anyone weighing our clinical recommendations can check the public record for themselves.
This page is a transparency notice and nothing more. Golden Coast Rehab makes no claim here about what the database does or does not contain regarding any individual clinician — CMS publishes that record, and it is the authoritative place to look.
How to search
Looking up a specific clinician
Open the federal database
Go to openpaymentsdata.cms.gov. It is run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and it is free to use — no account, no fee.
Search by name
Use the search for covered recipients and enter the clinician's first and last name. Adding the state narrows results, which matters for common names.
Confirm you have the right person
Profiles list a specialty and a primary practice location. Check both before reading the record — several clinicians can share a name.
Read the record by year
Payments are grouped by program year and by the manufacturer that reported them, with the nature of each payment shown. Records for a given year are published the following June.
openpaymentsdata.cms.gov — an official website of the United States government.
A listing is not an accusation
Finding a clinician in the Open Payments database does not mean anything improper happened. A record can be created by a twenty-dollar lunch at a conference, a textbook, reimbursed travel, or paid participation in legitimate clinical research. Financial relationships between manufacturers and clinicians are common, legal, and often how new treatments get studied and taught.
The database exists so those relationships are visible and can be weighed, not so they can be assumed to be misconduct. CMS itself notes that the data does not identify whether a payment was appropriate or whether it influenced anyone's clinical judgment.
If you have a question about your own care or who is treating you, ask us directly — call (858) 925-8589 or contact us. You can also read about the people who provide care here on our team page.