Emanuel Mejias Lafontaine, MD
Payments from drug & device makers
What this record shows
This record is dominated by food and beverage: $1,507 of the $2,184 with a category attached, or 69.0%. 12 manufacturers reported payments, led by Intuitive Surgical at 40.7% of the total. Reporting peaked in 2024 at $769 and has fallen 68.0% since, to $246 in 2025.
Across 43 payments — averaging $50.78 each. Meals, travel, consulting and speaking fees, gifts and royalties reported by drug and device makers.
- Intuitive Surgical$890
- Medtronic$659
- Davol Inc.$206
- Johnson & Johnson$163
- Bard Peripheral Vascular, Inc.$83
- Johnson And Johnson International$36
- plus $146 from 6 others
What the payments were for
- Travel & lodging$67731%
- Food & beverage$1,50769%
Most of this is food and beverage — typically meals provided during product presentations at a clinic or hospital. Nationally that is the single largest category of reported payments by count.
General payments by program year
Who reported the general payments
Companies are grouped under their corporate parent — a single manufacturer often files under several CMS reporting entities. Research and ownership payments are counted separately and are not in this table.
| Company | Payments | Total |
|---|---|---|
| Intuitive Surgical | 14 | $890 |
| Medtronic(2 entities) | 8 | $659 |
| Davol Inc. | 4 | $206 |
| Johnson & Johnson | 3 | $163 |
| Bard Peripheral Vascular, Inc. | 2 | $83 |
| Johnson And Johnson International | 2 | $36 |
| Chiesi USA, Inc. | 2 | $35 |
| Boston Scientific | 2 | $28 |
| Olympus Latin America, Inc. | 1 | $24 |
| ZOLL Services LLC (a/k/a ZOLL Lifecor Corp) | 3 | $23 |
| Avanos Medical | 1 | $19 |
| Teleflex LLC | 1 | $16 |
What the payments were tied to
Products named in the reported payments. Only payments of $100 or more are attributed here — the typical reported payment nationally is a meal worth about $16, and listing those product-by-product would be noise.
- Da Vinci Surgical System$620
- Signia$175
How this compares
$2,184 in reported general payments places this provider in the 75th percentile of 202 surgery providers in Puerto Rico.
Medicare billing
What this is not: this is the amount Original Medicare Part B allowed for services this provider billed in 2024. It is not their income. It excludes Medicare Advantage — now more than half of all Medicare enrollment — along with Medicaid and all commercial insurance, and it is gross practice revenue before staff, rent, supplies and malpractice premiums. CMS also suppresses any figure covering ten or fewer patients, so low-volume providers appear smaller than they are.
Most prescribed under Part D
| Drug | Claims | Cost to plans & patients |
|---|---|---|
| Pantoprazole Sodium | 16 | $260 |
Paid to pharmacies, not to this prescriber.
Other surgery in Ponce
- Laura Rodriguez RiveraPonce$73K
- Marcia Alayon RosarioPonce$14K
- Hiram Soler-BernardiPonce$12K
- Yarret Robles TorresPonce$6K
- Francisco Rivera-PedrogoPonce$6K
- Abelardo Quinones MartinezPonce$5K
- Ashla Gaibi RodriguezPonce$3K
- Hector Lopez GonzalezPonce$3K
- Angel RomeroPonce$3K
- Juan Gonzalez CruzPonce$2K
Where these figures come from
- Payments: CMS Open Payments, program years 2019–2025 (publication P06302026_06032026).
- Billing: Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners, data year 2024. Original Medicare Part B only.
- Identity: NPPES NPI Registry, July 2026.