Analysis of American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Guideline Author Self-Disclosure Compared With Open Payments Industry Disclosure

摘要

Clinical guidelines are rigorously developed recommendations that aim to improve patient care. Given the increased prominence of these guidelines, more scrutiny has been placed on their development process and potential conflicts of interest that their authors may have. Many professional organizations have instituted conflict-of-interest policies, though great variation exists. At present, disclosing relationships with industry (RWIs) or other potential conflicts of interest has become a routine practice, with some professional societies requiring not only relevant relationships that authors may have but also a comprehensive list of all relationships. Until recently, it has not been possible to directly assess the quality of disclosures given the asymmetry of information, as companies and other organizations did not routinely disclose payments to clinicians. With the introduction of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, industry is required to disclose payments to physicians, which is now published annually in the Open Payments database. As of this writing, data are reported for August 2013 through December 2017. Since data collection began, almost 2300 companies have reported $33.4 billion in payments to ≈977 000 physicians.