Academic Vascular Surgeon Involvement in Health Care Technology Consulting

Vascular medical device companies rely on the input of vascular surgeons to develop safe and effective products, often recruiting surgeons with the most experience as paid consultants. To promote transparency with these financial relationships, our industry partners must publicly disclose payments made to surgeons via the Open Payments program, established through the Sunshine Act. We aim to identify the proportion of academic vascular surgeons consulting for medical device companies, assess for differences in payments both compared to the national average and based on clinical experience, and publications. Open Payments data was collected for general payments made to academic vascular surgeons at the top ten integrated vascular surgery residencies based on the 2022 US News report. Additional data from program websites and PubMed were used to determine each surgeon's years of clinical experience and number of peer-reviewed publications. A total of 109 vascular surgeons were identified, of which 95 (87.2%) received a combined $1,306,219 in general payments. Only 28 (25.7%) received consulting payments totaling 53% of all payments, and 14 (12.8%) received no payments. Consulting payments per vascular surgeon averaged $38,286, with median $15,403, and standard deviation of $60,808. These were significantly higher than both the national average general payments per vascular surgeon (n = 4073; P < .0001), and general payments made to their colleagues (n = 67; P < .0001). Surgeons with over 20 years of experience (n = 9; 32.1%) had significantly higher average payments per person than those with less than 20 years ($56,272 vs $9786; P < .002) (Fig 1). Surgeons with over 100 publications (n = 11; 39.3%) had significantly higher average payments per person than those with less than 100 ($50,252.50 vs $8212.57; P < .008) (Fig 2). A minority of vascular surgeons consult with industry at the top academic programs; however, those who do receive significantly more general payments than both the national average, and their colleagues who do not consult, largely driven by consulting payments. Our industry partners clearly value the input of surgeons with more clinical experience and peer-reviewed publications; however, there is tremendous variability both between and within institutions, suggesting an influence by institutional policies and personal interests of the surgeon. Further analysis including additional training programs and years of data are needed to gain a more comprehensive understanding of distribution of consulting payments among academic vascular surgeons.Fig 2Surgeons with more than 100 publications had significantly higher average payments than those with less than 100 (P < .008).