Food and beverage: 87.8% of records, 19.2% of value in one 2025 disclosure cohort

Counting payment records and counting their reported value give different descriptions of the same disclosure cohort. Our offline analysis of the retained CMS Open Payments general-payment aggregate for Program Year 2025 covers 73,594 records totaling $14,691,699.25. Only records whose first reported specialty field exactly equals “Allopathic & Osteopathic Physicians|Otolaryngology” are included.

The Food and Beverage category contains 64,582 records totaling $2,818,483.56. That is 87.8% of the cohort’s records and 19.2% of its reported value. A count-based description and a value-based description therefore place a different emphasis on this category, even though both calculations use the same retained cohort.

Consulting Fee provides another view of that distinction: 1,642 records totaling $5,328,297.39 account for 2.2% of the records and 36.3% of reported value. These are category aggregates. They do not reveal the distribution of payments within the category, how many unique clinicians received them, or the circumstances of an individual transfer.

For an ENT industry reader, the question has to determine the denominator. A share of records describes how the disclosures are distributed across payment categories. A share of value describes how the reported dollars are distributed across those categories. Neither share can answer how many ENT physicians have a relationship with an industry organization, whether a product is used, or whether a particular arrangement is current.

The calculation keeps those units separate. We reconciled the counts and stored cent-rounded amounts across all 14 categories to the cohort totals, then divided each selected category’s count and value by its corresponding total. Percentages use decimal arithmetic and are rounded to one decimal place. Rounded percentages should not be treated as additional measurement precision.

The filter also limits the interpretation. This is a general-payment cohort selected by one exact first reported specialty field, not a census of ENT clinicians, subspecialty activity or every ENT-related transfer. Research and ownership datasets are outside the analysis. A record count is not a person count, and reported transfer value is not a measure of physician income, clinical quality, influence or impropriety. CMS says it publishes data attested to by reporting entities and does not comment on which relationships might be beneficial or pose potential conflicts of interest.

The historical dates remain separate. The payments belong to Program Year 2025; the retained dataset’s issued and modified dates are June 30, 2026. The aggregate was collected September 28, 2026. The local record also contains an October 15 metadata-check timestamp, which is distinct from a new aggregate retrieval. This analysis uses that retained publication vintage and does not establish a new payment year, a change over time or the dataset’s current live contents.

Source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Open Payments 2025 General Payment Data, dataset fb0b1734-1410-429d-92f6-3f4b35218e5e. Original offline aggregate analysis by ENT Daily Dispatch. This use does not imply CMS endorsement.