Evaluation of non-research and research industry payments to pediatric hematologist/oncologists in the United States between 2013 and 2021

Abstract

Financial interactions between healthcare industry and pediatric hematologist/oncologists (PHOs) could be conflicts of interest. Nevertheless, little is known about financial relationships between healthcare industry and PHOs. This cross-sectional analysis of the Open Payments Database examined general and research payments to PHOs from healthcare industry in the United States between 2013 and 2021. Payments to the PHOs were analyzed descriptively. Trends in payments were assessed using generalized estimating equation models. Of 2784 PHOs, 2142 (76.9%) PHOs received payments totaling $187.3 million from the healthcare industry between 2013 and 2021. Approximately, $46.3 million (24.8%) were general payments and $137.7 million (73.5%) were funding for research where PHOs served as principal investigators (associated research funding). Both general payments and associated research funding considerably increased between 2014 and 2019. The number of PHOs receiving general payments and associated research funding annually increased by 2.2% (95% CI: 1.2–3.3%, p < .001) and 5.0% (95% CI: 3.3–6.8%, p < .001) between 2014 and 2019, respectively.

Keywords:

• Open Payments Database
• industry payments
• pediatric hematology and oncology
• conflicts of interest
• ethics
• health policy

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Ms. Megumi Aizawa for her dedicated support of our research and Dr. Yuki Senoo for her professional language editing of this manuscript. For drafting parts of the presented text, the authors used the pre-trained ChatGPT (version 4.0) model developed by OpenAI in order to check and edit the manuscript for spelling and grammatical errors. We checked and edited the text for unintended plagiarism, and verified all facts and references that we used from the large language model outputs.

Author contributions

Anju Murayama has full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. Concept and design: all authors. Data acquisition: Anju Murayama. Software: Anju Murayama. Visualization: all authors. Statistical analysis: Anju Murayama and Sae Kamamoto. Drafting of the manuscript: all authors. Critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content: Anju Murayama and Sae Kamamoto. Administration: Anju Murayama.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

We did not receive any financial and technical support from any entities for this study.