How to read these numbers
OpenScript displays CMS Open Payments program year 2025 general-payment data. It publishes 500 profiles with reported ten-digit NPIs from a source slice of 500 recipients selected by total payments. It does not publish the full CMS recipient dataset. An absent profile does not mean that no payments were reported.
What each number describes
| Number | How to read it |
|---|---|
| Total general payments | The sum of reported general-payment amounts for the recipient in the displayed program year, shown in dollars and cents. |
| Program year | The year assigned to the reported payments in the source file. It is separate from this article's publication date. |
| Category amount | The sum of amounts carrying that CMS nature-of-payment label, such as Royalty or License, Consulting Fee, or Food and Beverage. |
| Largest category share | The largest category amount divided by the recipient's total, expressed as a percentage. The category name explains what reporting entities reported. |
| Payment count | The number of source payment records aggregated for the recipient. |
The largest-category sentence rounds non-integer shares to whole percentages and labels them “about.” Near the ends of the range, “less than 1%” or “more than 99%” avoids presenting a small share as zero or a nearly complete share as exactly 100%. The category breakdown retains the dollar-and-cent amounts used in that calculation.
A category's percentage describes its share of the reported dollars. It does not describe the share of the recipient's income, time, patients, or prescriptions. Those denominators are not included in this snapshot.
What is outside the totals
CMS publishes research payments and ownership or investment interests separately. This site uses the general-payment file only. Its totals do not include those other files, other program years, or corrections that are absent from the committed snapshot. The snapshot also lacks complete recipient-type classifications, so it cannot supply a physician-only subtotal.
The site-wide totals describe the processed source file; they are larger in scope than the published profiles. The snapshot includes records without a reported NPI in those source totals. Profiles without a supplied ten-digit NPI are not published, and missing identifiers are never inferred from names.
Check a recipient and a figure against CMS
- Use the profile's exact NPI to confirm the recipient on the official CMS Open Payments portal. Names alone can be ambiguous.
- Select program year 2025 and general payments.
- Compare the total, payment records, and nature-of-payment categories with the profile.
- Review other years and the separate research and ownership or investment records when you need a broader history.
CMS describes its fields and interpretation guidance in the Methodology Overview & Data Dictionary (January 2026); the caution quoted below appears on page 4. Recipients can use the linked CMS review and dispute process to review reported records.