CancerDrs

Methodology

A plain-English explanation of where the numbers on our transparency pages come from, what they do and don't mean, and how physicians correct records they believe are wrong.

Where the data comes from

Every dollar figure on these pages comes from CMS Open Payments, the federal database created by the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (42 U.S.C. §1320a-7h, enacted as §6002 of the Affordable Care Act). Under federal law, pharmaceutical and medical-device manufacturers must report essentially every payment or transfer of value they make to U.S. physicians. CMS publishes the data once a year, usually around June 30. As work of the U.S. government, the data is in the public domain (17 U.S.C. §105). We republish it with attribution.

What we show, and why

CMS's own search interface is built for regulators and researchers. Patients deciding on a cancer specialist or weighing a clinical trial are not the intended audience. CancerDrs re-presents the same data with patient questions in mind:

  • For the oncologists in our directory, we show the total disclosed payments they received in the most recently published program year — broken down between general payments (speaker fees, consulting, meals, travel, etc.) and research funding (payments tied to clinical-trial work), and summarized by payment category and largest paying company.
  • For each clinical trial, we show the drug maker funding it and, where CMS has matching records, the research payments the maker disclosed to the doctors leading the trial.
  • For cancers where multiple branded drugs compete for the same indication, we show the companies making those drugs and their aggregate disclosed payments to oncologists in our index, so you can see the commercial context around a treatment recommendation.

What the numbers don't mean

  • A high dollar figure is not, on its own, a conflict of interest. A doctor paid substantial research funding for serving as principal investigator on a clinical trial is being compensated for real scientific work. Our pages report what was disclosed; they do not grade any physician.
  • A low or zero dollar figure does not mean a physician is independent of industry. Many academic oncologists accept industry support only through their hospital. When payments flow to a hospital, the individual physician's NPI is not on the record.
  • Association is not causation. Peer-reviewed studies have shown associations between industry payments and prescribing patterns in oncology (for one widely cited example, see Mitchell et al., JAMA Internal Medicine, 2019). Association at the population level does not prove that any specific payment influenced any specific prescribing decision.

Known limitations of the data

  • Hospital-directed payments. When a manufacturer pays a teaching hospital directly, the physician's NPI is not on the record — so those dollars do not appear in an individual doctor's totals.
  • Delayed publication. CMS allows manufacturers to delay publishing certain new-product research payments for up to four years. These records exist but may have fields withheld. We surface a "delayed" note where present.
  • Disputed records. Roughly 1–2% of payment records are formally disputed by the named recipient. CMS publishes them anyway, flagged. We surface a "disputed" note where present.
  • Manufacturer name variations. A company may appear under several similar names across records. Totals by what appears to be a single parent company may be split across spellings.
  • Publication lag. Each program year's data is published roughly six months after year-end. Our pages show the most recently published year.

If you are a physician who believes a record is wrong

CMS — not CancerDrs — runs the correction process. To challenge a record, use the CMS Open Payments review and dispute process. The reporting manufacturer submits a correction; CMS republishes. Our pages update automatically on the next refresh.

If you have a specific concern about how a record is presented on CancerDrs that you cannot resolve through CMS, contact [email protected].

How often the data refreshes

  • We refresh against each annual CMS publication (typically mid-year).
  • Every transparency page displays the date its data was last pulled.
  • We pin the exact CMS publication revision we ingested; we do not silently adopt mid-year corrections.
  • Data currently shown on CancerDrs was pulled on .

Further reading

How CancerDrs handles this content — legal posture

Our editorial, dispute, and legal posture around payment-transparency content is explicit. In short: we republish federal figures verbatim, we don't editorialize per physician, and disputes are handled by CMS, not by us.