Examining the distribution of industry payments made to medical doctors

The Center for Medical and Medicaid Services (CMS) new Open Payments database shows the consulting fees, research grants, travel and other reimbursements made to medical industry in 2013

There are 2,619,700 payments in the CMS data made to 356,190 physicians.   The average payment made to physicians was $255.22.   The median payment was $15.52

Table 1: Summary of Payments – STATA  output

The physicians received an average total  of $1,877.11 in payments.  The median total payment for the 356,190 physicians in the data was $94.15

Table 2: Summary of Payments – STATA  output

Below is the STATA code for the results:
count gen
bysort phy: gen hj =_n
bysort physician_p: gen hj =_n
sum hj, det
count if hj==1
sum tot, det
bysort physician_p: egen hj2 = tot(total)
bysort physician_p: egen hj2 = total(total_am)
sum hj2
sum hj2, det
sort physcian_p
sort physician_p
sum hj2 if _n==1, det
sum hj, det
sum hj2 if hj==1, det