Trend in Industry Payments to Rheumatologists in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic Between 2013 and 2021

Abstract

The Open Payments Database (OPD), the legally binding database of payments made by pharmaceutical companies and device manufacturers to all physicians,1 was launched in 2013 in the United States, in order to improve transparency in financial relationship between healthcare professionals and industry. Meanwhile, large number of the general public and physicians were not aware of the OPD2,3 and there has been no reducing trend among rheumatologists so far.4

Industry payments to pathologists in the USA between 2013 and 2021

“…We performed descriptive analyses of the extracted payment data at the individual physician level and by payment categories. Per-physician payments were calculated only among physicians who received payments, as previously performed in many previous studies 1 6 8–10. Additionally, the prevalence of pathologists receiving payments and per-physician payments were evaluated according to pathologist demographic characteristics, including gender and subspecialty, adjusted for pathologist practice location.…”

“…We employed a multivariate logistic regression model to examine the odds of pathologists receiving payments based on their characteristics. As the payment data were highly skewed, we employed a multivariate negative binomial regression model to assess the association between pathologist characteristics and the relative monetary values of payments, as in previous studies 2 8–11. No institutional board review and approval were required for this study as all data used met the definition of freely available public data.…”

Industry‐sponsored meal payments are associated with prescriptions and Medicare expenditures on brand‐name colchicine in the United States

“…This study linked to three publicly accessible databases by physicians' National Provider Identifier (NPI) numbers: the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Medicare Part D Public Use Files, 13 the Open Payments Database, 14 and the Physician Compare database, 15 consistent with methods used in previous research. 5,[8][9][10][16][17][18][19] To ensure the privacy of Medicare beneficiaries, the Medicare Part D Public Use Files omit prescribing information for drugs with 10 or fewer claims per year. Moreover, the Open Payments Database exclusively covers payments from the healthcare industry to physicians practicing in the United States until 2020.…”

“…Compare database, because these data were self-declared by the healthcare companies and physicians, as pointed out in previous studies. [7][8][9]16,31 Lastly, this study was unable to adjust the regression models for important patient characteristics such as the type of disease, the disease severity, the patient age, comorbidities, and the number of patients treated by each prescribing physician. This limitation exists because such data were not available from the publicly accessible Medicare database.…”

Gender Disparities in Medical Industry Payments

“…First, we are interested in how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the male-female disparity of industry compensations. Sullivan and colleagues analyzed data from the Open Payments Database only through 2019, but it is already possible to obtain data through 2021 as we did . Notably, during the pandemic, academic performance has been more devastating among women than men, and to analyze whether similar disproportionate impacts exist in the medical industry compensations is of interest after 2020.…”