Recently, JAMA published an investigative study on the inconsistencies between self-declared conflicts of interests as compared to the open payments database, “Association of Compensation From the Surgical and Medical Device Industry to Physicians and Self-declared Conflict of Interest.”
The study sought to find the association between the physicians who receive the top compensation from surgical and/or medical device manufacturers and their academic affiliation, expertise, and disclosure of conflicts of interest. To that end, it analyzed the 10 physicians who received the highest compensation from ten large surgical and medical device manufacturers as found in the 2015 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payments Database, for a total of 100 physicians.
For each of the 100 physicians, the total amount of general payments, number of payments, institution type, and academic rank were recorded. Royalty or license payments were excluded. Then, a search of PubMed identified articles published by each physician from January 1, 2016, through December 31, 2016, including their associated conflict of interest declaration.
The 100 physicians included in the sample population were paid a total of $12,446,969, with a median payment of $95,993. Fifty physicians were faculty at academic institutions. The average number of papers by a researcher was 18 (range from 0-75) for the authors. In 2016, 412 articles were published by these physicians, with an average of 4 publications (range from 0-25) and median of 1 (36 physicians had no publications). Of these articles, 225 (54.6%) were relevant to the general payments received by the authors.
After analyzing the numbers, the researchers found that conflicts of interest were declared by the authors in only 84 of 225 of the relevant 2016 publications – a 37.3% reporting rate.
This article should serve as a reminder to faculty to always disclose relevant conflicts of interest. However, what the research fails to make mention of is that not all interests are considered relevant or timely. Typically, one discloses an interest for 24 months – if the relationship is older than that, it would not necessarily need to be disclosed and may result in a seeming inconsistency.