The Elephant in the Operating Room: Disclosure of Payments From Industry

Financial transparency is a cornerstone of maintaining public trust in the healthcare system, particularly regarding the relationships between doctors and industry.In Australia, the disclosure of industry-to-doctor payments serves as a critical lens through which these professional interactions can be understood.Using records from a database of pharmaceutical industry payments, we estimated the proportion of specialist doctors who received at least one payment from a pharmaceutical company over a nine-year period, and report our results stratified by the medical college of which they are fellows (Figure 1) [1].Between November 2015 and October 2024, 17.8% (16 337/91 698) of specialist doctors received ≥ 1 payment.There was wide variation between colleges, ranging from the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) with only 1.3% (48/3599) of fellows receiving a payment, through to the Australasian College of Dermatologists (ACD) with 52.8% (357/676) of fellows receiving a payment.The overall rate for fellows of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) was 6.9% (455/6572).When examining surgical subspecialties, wide variation was also seen; Urologists had the highest rate of payment (32.6% (170/521)) and Paediatric Surgeons had the lowest rate (0.9% (1/106)).The methods to obtain these figures are described in the (supplementary appendix in Supporting Information).These data provide an overview of financial interactions between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry.However, there is a notable exception: Payments from medical device companies are not included.