Has Richard Wupperman, MD received payments from drug or device companies?

Yes. Drug and device makers reported $808,360 in general payments to Richard Wupperman, MD across 171 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 Richard Wupperman, 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 Richard Wupperman, 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.

Richard Wupperman, MD

Orthopaedic Surgery of the Spine · Austin, TXNPI 1760539647

Payments from drug & device makers

What this record shows

This record is dominated by royalties or licence payments: $790,488 of the $808,360 with a category attached, or 97.8%. Alphatec Spine, Inc accounts for 96.5% of it on its own, with 18 other manufacturers making up the rest. Among orthopaedic surgery of the spine clinicians in TX with any reported payments, this total sits in the top 10% — high for the specialty, which is a reason to read the composition above rather than the number alone.

$808,360in general payments, 2019–2025

Across 171 payments — averaging $4727.25 each. Meals, travel, consulting and speaking fees, gifts and royalties reported by drug and device makers.

Alphatec Spine, Inc$780K
Zimvie Inc.$17K
Highridge Medical LLC$6K
Si-bone, Inc.$2K
Zimmer Biomet$1K
Medtronic$1K
plus $2K from 13 others

What the payments were for

Royalty or licence$790,48898%
Consulting fees$3,8750%
Travel & lodging$7,0301%
Food & beverage$6,9671%

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
Alphatec Spine, Inc	55	$780,381
Zimvie Inc.	8	$16,591
Highridge Medical LLC	6	$5,551
Si-bone, Inc.	36	$1,706
Zimmer Biomet	4	$1,141
Medtronic(2 entities)	22	$1,047
Globus Medical(2 entities)	11	$726
Stryker	12	$405
Abbott	4	$196
Carlsmed, Inc.	2	$173
Nexxt Spine LLC	1	$136
Johnson & Johnson	2	$82
Ulrich Medical USA, Inc.	1	$75
Wenzel Spine, Inc.	2	$34
Intrinsic Therapeutics	1	$31
Spinal Elements, Inc.	1	$30
Centinel Spine, LLC	1	$26
Olympus America Inc.	1	$20
Providence Medical Technology, 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.

Invictus MIS$680,784
INVICTUS OPEN$54,002
Other - Miscellaneous$41,838
TrellOss-C SA$22,141
TrellOss$375
TM NextGen$375
LIF$338
Pulse$215
IdentiTi$203
UNID_PASS$167
Battalion TLIF - PC$162
CATALYFT PL EXPANDABLE INTERBODY SYSTEM$144
SafeOp$143
PROCLAIM$143
Nexxt Spine Product Review$136
O-ARM-Spine$124
iFuse Implant$120
aprevo$111

How this compares

$808,360 in reported general payments places this provider in the 90th percentile of 207 orthopaedic surgery of the spine providers in Texas.

See all orthopaedic surgery of the spine providers in Texas →

Medicare billing

Part B allowed, 2024

$426,918

Medicare patients

295

Services billed

1,486

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
Hydrocodone-AcetaminophenHydrocodone/Acetaminophen	266	$3,026
Oxycodone-AcetaminophenOxycodone Hcl/Acetaminophen	141	$1,697
Methocarbamol	12	$303
Oxycodone Hcl	35	$194
Gabapentin	14	$88
Tizanidine Hcl	11	$83
Diazepam	26	$39

Paid to pharmacies, not to this prescriber.

Other orthopaedic surgery of the spine in Austin

Randall DryerAustin$2.9M
Craig KuhnsAustin$2.4M
Matthew GeckAustin$87K
Jason ToyAustin$73K
David WimberleyHouston$2.2M
Jeffrey PhelpsNorth Richland Hills$1.9M
Eric WieserArlington$1.5M
Andrew ClavennaDallas$1.3M
Ivan ChengKyle$1.2M
Stephen TolhurstFlower Mound$1.1M

See the full list for Texas →

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.

Is this you, or does something look wrong? →