Cms Open Payments

mcp-cms-open-payments

CMS Open Payments, with annual dataset discovery through the official DKAN API.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1875+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

Tool	Description
open_payments_top_companies	Rank the drug and device manufacturers that paid US physicians and teaching hospitals the most in a program year — the "who spends the most on doctors" question. Returns each company with its total US dollars, payment count and how many distinct recipients it reached, ordered by spend. CMS publishes no aggregate and its live API cannot group over the 14-million-row payment table, so this reads a summary computed offline; the response states the program year and when the summary was refreshed. Payments are disclosures of transfers of value, not evidence of wrongdoing.
open_payments_search	THE source for pharma/device industry money to doctors — "payments from manufacturers to physicians", "which drug companies paid this doctor", "Sunshine Act data", "industry payments to hospitals". Search one CMS Open Payments program-year dataset using structured recipient, company, product, geography, payment-nature, and amount filters. CAPABILITY LIMIT, state it rather than guessing: this source can look up and filter but CANNOT rank ALL manufacturers by total spend ("which manufacturer paid the most" is not computable live — the 14M-row aggregation times out upstream); answer those by saying so and offering a named-company lookup (open_payments_company) instead. CMS publishes company-reported relationships; a payment does not imply wrongdoing or a conflict.
open_payments_physician	Find CMS Open Payments records for a physician/non-physician practitioner by exact NPI in one program year. Returns the authoritative total match count plus a bounded payment sample; reported relationships do not imply misconduct. If you have a name rather than an NPI, resolve it first against the NPPES registry (npi_individual in the clinicaltables pack), or use open_payments_search with recipient_last_name + recipient_first_name.
open_payments_company	Search payments reported by a manufacturer or GPO in one CMS Open Payments program year. Company matching is a case-insensitive substring and may combine similarly named legal entities.
open_payments_product	Search general-payment records associated with a named drug, biologic, device, or medical supply across all five CMS product slots. Product association is reporting-entity supplied and does not prove the payment was exclusively for that product.
open_payments_research	Search CMS research-payment records by company, recipient NPI, study name, or state for one program year. Amounts may represent funding routed through an institution and should not automatically be attributed as personal compensation.
open_payments_recipient_history	Build a cross-year CMS Open Payments history for an exact recipient NPI. Returns authoritative annual match counts plus bounded samples; sampled dollar totals are explicitly not full-dataset totals.
open_payments_company_history	Build a cross-year CMS Open Payments history for a company-name substring. Annual counts are authoritative for that query; dollar figures cover only the returned bounded sample and company aliases may split or combine legal entities.
open_payments_product_history	Build a cross-year general-payment history for a reported product-name substring across CMS product slots. Product association is reporter-supplied; sample dollar amounts are not complete annual totals.
open_payments_compare_companies	Compare 2–5 company-name queries across CMS Open Payments program years using authoritative match counts and clearly labeled bounded samples. This does not compare complete spend unless every matching row fits in the sample.
open_payments_nature_breakdown	Break down the bounded payment sample for one recipient, company, or product across years by reported nature of payment. Counts and dollars in the breakdown are sample statistics; annual total_matches remains the authoritative query count.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cms-open-payments": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/cms-open-payments/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/cms-open-payments/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1875+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/open_payments_top_companies \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"limit":3}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/open_payments_top_companies. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Standalone (no gateway account)

This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cms-open-payments": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-cms-open-payments"]
    }
  }
}

Or run it directly to confirm it starts:

npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-cms-open-payments

It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Cms Open Payments data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT