Claudio Ballester

What was reported, 2019–2025

$3,731

General payments

23 separate payments. What they were, as CMS records them, is below.

$0

Research payments

Funding for a study, usually paid to an institution with this doctor named on it. Not added to general payments, and not income.

$0

Ownership and investment

The value of a stake this doctor or an immediate family member held.

0

Disputed

This doctor has contested none of the payments reported about them.

How this compares

General payments: $3,731, 2019–⁠2025

By the amount companies reported, 10,116th among the 20,663 profiles with general payments in Orthopaedic Surgery.

General payments: this profile's rank in each group, its place among the profiles nationally and its share of the national total

Nationally	248,531st of 1,688,859
In PR	1,239th of 11,865
In Orthopaedic Surgery	10,116th of 20,663
Profiles below it nationally	More than 85%
Share of the national total	< 0.1%

What the payments were

Each payment as the manufacturer categorized it when reporting it to CMS, across 2019–2025. Together they are the general payments above. A category is the reporter’s, and nothing in the record says a payment in any of them was improper.

By program year

CMS reports a program year at a time and also publishes its own total across them, which is what the figures above are. These rows are that total taken apart, not a second set of payments.

CMS’s file covers 2019–2025. It holds no payments to Claudio Ballester in 2019–2020, 2022 and 2024.

The record

National Provider Identifier

1326327552

The identifier this page is addressed by, and the one both CMS files share.

Specialty

Orthopaedic Surgery

Allopathic & Osteopathic Physicians, in CMS's taxonomy.

Licensed in

CA

The state of the license CMS lists first.

Recipient type

Covered Recipient Physician

How CMS classifies the recipient of these payments.

Medicare prescribing

What this provider billed to Medicare Part D in 2024, as CMS published it. Medicare Part D only: what they prescribed outside it is not here.

196

Claims

Prescriptions and refills billed to Part D, as CMS counts them.

$4,984

Total drug cost

What Part D, the plan and the patient paid together. Not what this provider was paid — they are paid nothing out of it.

150

Beneficiaries

People with at least one prescription from this provider.

Withheld

Brand-name claims

Of the claims above, those for a brand-name drug. CMS withheld this value and marked it "*". It publishes two markers and two reasons — a value between 1 and 10, or one withheld so another cannot be worked out — without saying which marker means which.

191

Generic claims

Of the claims above, those for a generic.

75

Opioid claims

CMS puts this provider's opioid prescribing rate at 38.265306122448976% of their claims. That is their figure, computed from their own unsuppressed data.

not reported

Antibiotic claims

Claims for an antibiotic.

Orthopedic Surgery

Prescriber type

As CMS classifies this prescriber. Credentials: M.D..

A blank is not a zero. CMS withholds a value between 1 and 10, and withholds the next lowest alongside it so the first cannot be worked out by subtraction — so a withheld figure is not even evidence that the number was small. Rows for ten or fewer claims are removed from the file altogether, which is why the parts of a total can be withheld while the total is published.

Elsewhere

• What drug and device companies pay doctors — the national picture these figures are part of.
• This record at CMS — the publisher’s own page for this profile.
• The NPI registry — who this identifier belongs to, at CMS.