HCP Meal Limits Survey 2026 Edition
Benchmarking 2024 and 2025 Industry Dataqordata's HCP Meal Limits Survey, combining 2024 and 2025 findings, reveals the structural shifts reshaping how life sciences compliance teams set, monitor, and manage meal limits for healthcare professional engagements.
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By the Numbers
of companies now maintain differentiated in-office and out-of-office meal limits in 2025, up from just 20% in 2024
of 2025 survey respondents conduct transfer of value monitoring, the new industry baseline
of compliance teams have only 1 to 2 people managing TOV monitoring responsibilities
of respondents set out-of-office breakfast limits at USD 40 or more in 2025, up from 20% in 2024
What's Inside
The policy structure shift
In 2024, 80% of companies applied uniform meal limits for all settings. By 2025, 75% now maintain differentiated in-office and out-of-office limits. If your policy has not been reviewed, it may no longer reflect industry norms.
Meal limit movement by setting
Out-of-office breakfast limits shifted meaningfully upward, with the USD 40 or more bracket growing from 20% to 50%. In-office dinner limits contracted. The divergence between settings is the clearest signal that a one-size policy carries increasing potential risk.
TOV monitoring is now universal
Transfer of value monitoring reached 100% adoption among 2025 respondents, up from 90% in 2024. The question compliance teams are now asking is not whether to monitor, but whether their current tools can handle it — especially with 56% of teams running on 1 to 2 people.
Purpose of This Report
qordata conducted its HCP Meal Limits Survey across two consecutive years, 2024 and 2025, to track evolving trends in how life sciences companies set, monitor, and manage meal limits for healthcare professional engagements. This report surfaces meaningful year-over-year shifts that compliance teams can use to benchmark and plan their own meal limit policies.
Who Should Read This
This report is written for compliance officers, compliance managers, and legal and finance teams at life sciences companies managing HCP engagement obligations under CMS Open Payments, EFPIA, and global transparency reporting requirements.
"Both survey years reflect voluntary participation from life sciences companies across a range of revenue sizes. The 2025 cohort included broader representation from mid-market and enterprise companies, with 44% in the USD 1 billion to USD 10 billion range and 19% above USD 10 billion, making trend comparisons particularly useful for benchmarking."
About qordata
qordata provides life sciences compliance teams a centralized platform to manage risk assessment, mitigation, continuous monitoring, HCP engagement oversight, and global transparency reporting. By unifying compliance data and automating auditing, monitoring, and risk detection, qordata delivers real-time visibility across commercial activities, enabling more proactive, scalable, and audit-ready compliance operations.
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