Sunshine Act: shedding light on inaccurate disclosures at a gynecologic annual meeting.
BACKGROUND
Physicians and hospital systems often have relationships with biomedical manufacturers to develop new ideas, products, and further education. Because this relationship can influence medical research and practice, reporting disclosures are necessary to reveal any potential bias and inform consumers. The Sunshine Act was created to develop a new reporting system of these financial relationships called the Open Payments database. Currently all disclosures submitted with research to scientific meetings are at the discretion of the physician. We hypothesized that financial relationships between authors and the medical industry are underreported.


OBJECTIVE
We aimed to describe concordance between physicians' financial disclosures listed in the abstract book from the 41st annual scientific meeting of the Society of Gynecologic Surgeons to physician payments reported to the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services Open Payments database for the same year.


METHODS
Authors and scientific committee members responsible for the content of the 41st annual scientific meeting of the Society of Gynecologic Surgeons were identified from the published abstract book; each abstract listed disclosures for each author. Abstract disclosures were compared with the transactions recorded on the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services Open Payments database for concordance. Two authors reviewed each nondisclosed Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services listing to determine the relatedness between the company listed on the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services and abstract content.


RESULTS
Abstracts and disclosures of 335 physicians meeting inclusion criteria were reviewed. A total of 209 of 335 physicians (62%) had transactions reported in the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, which totaled $1.99 million. Twenty-four of 335 physicians (7%) listed companies with their abstracts; 5 of those 24 physicians were concordant with the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services. The total amount of all nondisclosed transactions was $1.3 million. Transactions reported in the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services associated with a single physician ranged from $11.72 to $405,903.36. Of the 209 physicians with Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services transactions that were not disclosed, the majority (68%) had at least 1 company listed in the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services that was determined after review to be related to the subject of their abstract.


CONCLUSIONS
Voluntary disclosure of financial relationships was poor, and the majority of unlisted disclosures in the abstract book were companies related to the scientific content of the abstract. Better transparency is needed by physicians responsible for the content presented at gynecological scientific meetings.
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Division of Urogynecology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM.
Jennifer C
JC
Thompson
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Division of Urogynecology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM.
Katherine A
KA
Volpe
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Division of Urogynecology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM.
Lindsay K
LK
Bridgewater
Clinical and Translational Science Center, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM.
Fares
F
Qeadan
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Division of Urogynecology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM.
Gena C
GC
Dunivan
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Division of Urogynecology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM.
Yuko M
YM
Komesu
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Division of Urogynecology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM.
Sara B
SB
Cichowski
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Division of Urogynecology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM.
Peter C
PC
Jeppson
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Division of Urogynecology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM. Electronic address: rrogers@salud.unm.edu.
Rebecca G
RG
Rogers
D000043:Abstracting and Indexing; D016265:Conflict of Interest / Q000191:economics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D003226:Congresses as Topic; D016208:Databases, Factual; D030881:Disclosure / Q000941:ethics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004345:Drug Industry / Q000191:economics / Q000941:ethics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D005260:Female; D006176:Gynecology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008484:Medicaid; D006278:Medicare; D010820:Physicians / Q000191:economics / Q000941:ethics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012955:Societies, Medical; D014481:United States
Open Payments database; Sunshine Act; financial disclosures