(123) Shedding Light on Physician Disclosures: Evaluating the Impact of the Sunshine Act

Introduction: The sunshine act was passed into law in 2010 to improve transparency of financial relationships between health care providers and industry partners. This study was done to evaluate the accuracy of self-reported physician conflict of interest (COI) statements compared to actual industry-reported funding via the OpenPayments database (OPD).

Methods: Data relating to disclosure statements for physicians was obtained from a national Otolaryngology-Head and Neck society meeting. The disclosure was then checked against accepted disclosure guidelines and compared to industry reported information in the OPD. Physicians were classified as compliant, non-compliant, or partially compliant. Physicians who reported all financial relationships were considered fully compliant, those who reported none non-compliant, and those who reported some, but not all considered partially compliant.

Results: A total of 125 participants were identified including those who gave podium presentations, served as panelists, moderators, or on the planning committee. Only 19% (24/125) were compliant with their reporting when compared to information obtained from OPD. Twenty-seven percent (34/125) were partially compliant, and 54% (67/125) were non-compliant. The average dollar amount participants received from industry sponsors was $9,850. The average amount received by non-compliant participants was $5,627. When stratified for gender, male participants received higher compensation on average ($12,378) compared to their female counterparts ($5,654). Notably, male compliance was also lower compared to female compliance (14.1% (11/78) compliance in men compared to 27.7% (13/47) compliance in women).

Conclusions: COI disclosure among ENT physicians at a large, national conference was low, with only 1 in 5 fully compliant. Average compensation rates were higher for men compared to women, who also were overall less compliant with disclosing this funding. There are numerous reasons that can contribute to this observed discordance between physician-reported and industry-reported funding that need further investigation.