Has Paul Lichstein, MD received payments from drug or device companies?

Yes. Drug and device makers reported $3,422 in general payments to Paul Lichstein, MD across 34 transactions between 2019–2025. Most Open Payments records nationally are meals worth under $20; a reported payment is not evidence of wrongdoing.

Does a payment mean Paul Lichstein, MD did something wrong?

No. Federal law requires drug and device makers to report almost every transfer of value to a physician, including a $14 sandwich at a lunch presentation. Consulting fees, research funding and royalties to device inventors are ordinary, legal parts of medicine. This site reports what was disclosed; it makes no allegation.

Where does this information about Paul Lichstein, MD come from?

The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Payments come from Open Payments, published under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act. Billing and prescribing figures come from the Medicare Physician & Other Practitioners and Part D Prescriber public use files for 2024.

Paul Lichstein, MD

Orthopaedic Surgery · Salisbury, NCNPI 1013203470

Payments from drug & device makers

$3,422in general payments, 2019–2025

Across 34 payments — averaging $100.63 each. Meals, travel, consulting and speaking fees, gifts and royalties reported by drug and device makers.

Smith+Nephew$2K
Zimmer Biomet$756
Johnson & Johnson$85
Medical Device Business Services, Inc.$82
Medtronic$70
Electronic Waveform Lab, Inc.$11

What the payments were for

Travel & lodging$1,32339%
Food & beverage$2,09961%

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
Smith+Nephew	20	$2,417
Zimmer Biomet	6	$756
Johnson & Johnson(2 entities)	2	$85
Medical Device Business Services, Inc.	3	$82
Medtronic	2	$70
Electronic Waveform Lab, Inc.	1	$11

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.

How this compares

$3,422 in reported general payments places this provider in the 40th percentile of 845 orthopaedic surgery providers in North Carolina.

See all orthopaedic surgery providers in North Carolina →

Medicare billing

Part B allowed, 2024

$228,379

Medicare patients

387

Services billed

3,494

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
Celecoxib	46	$757
Methylprednisolone	37	$263
Tramadol Hcl	43	$169
Meloxicam	54	$153
Hydrocodone-AcetaminophenHydrocodone/Acetaminophen	20	$138
Oxycodone Hcl	24	$101
Cefadroxil	12	$85
Amoxicillin	37	$35

Paid to pharmacies, not to this prescriber.

Other orthopaedic surgery in Salisbury

James ComadollSalisbury$1.1M
Thomas FehringCharlotte$18.3M
Walter BeaverCharlotte$7.4M
Robert AndersonCharlotte$6.6M
William JiranekDurham$6.4M
John MasonCharlotte$6.2M
Thomas VailDurham$5.7M
William DavisCharlotte$5.2M
John EllingtonCharlotte$5.2M
Mark EasleyDurham$4.2M

See the full list for North Carolina →

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.

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