INTRODUCTION: Financial ties between physicians and industry may reflect and affect academic achievements and research. In gynecology, little is known on whether academic performance correlates with the scale of industry payments. Characterizing this relationship may yield important insights into how industry interactions align with academic impact. OBJECTIVE: To examine industry-related income of gynecologists in correlation with academic performance. METHODS: A cross-sectional study using general payments data from the Open Payments database from 2018 to 2024, identifying all general payments to physicians listed as gynecology specialists. H-index values, a measure of scholarly output, were collected from publicly available bibliometric sources and matched to the top-paid physicians. Linear regression was performed to evaluate the relationship between total cash payments and H-index among the 2000 largest payments. Additional descriptive analyses summarized payment frequency, nature, payer type, geographic distribution, and physician gender for all payments during the study period. RESULTS: Overall, 119, 345 payments, totaling 26, 041, 549, of which 18, 295, 067 in cash, were reported and paid to 5787 registered gynecologists. Among the 2000 highest cash payments, no correlation was found in linear regression between H-index and industry payments (Spearman’s correlation, 0. 000). The mean total cash payment per physician was 1407. 9 SD ±20. 2. Food and beverage accounted for 81. 9% of all payments. The leading payers were drug companies (69. 1%), followed by medical device companies (24. 5%). By geography, New York (9. 8%), California (9. 2%) and Florida (8. 6%) led in number of physicians who received payments. Adjusted per physician, Kentucky had the highest per-capita average payment (16, 531), followed by Virginia (13, 063) and Illinois (12, 438; Figure 1). CONCLUSIONS: This study evaluated the relationship between academic performance and industry payments among top-earning gynecologists across the United States. Analysis revealed that H-index, was not significantly associated with higher industry payments. In addition, regional variation was observed. These findings suggest a misalignment between academic visibility and financial relationships, highlighting persistent disparities within the specialty. Further research is warranted to try and evaluate the cause of this discrepancy. Table 1
Shats et al. (Fri,) studied this question.