School of Medicine, Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan.
Medical Governance Research Institute, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
J Eval Clin Pract. 2023 Sep;29(6):883-886. doi: 10.1111/jep.13877. Epub 2023 Jun 7.
Pharmaceutical companies make payments to physicians such as compensations for lecturing or consulting. Of particular, financial relationships between pharmaceutical companies and leaders of professional medical societies are concern in medical community. However, little was known about them in Japan.
This study aimed to evaluate the magnitude and prevalence of personal payments to executive board members (EBMs) of 15 medical associations representing different subspecialties within the Japanese Society of Internal Medicine.
All EBMs of 15 medical associations representing internal medicine subspecialties were collected from each association webpage. Payments to the EBMs were extracted from the pharmaceutical companies belonging to the Japan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association between 2016 and 2020. We performed descriptive analysis on the payment data.
Of the 353 different EBMs identified, 350 (99.2%) received one or more personal payments from the pharmaceutical companies over the 5 years. 99.2% (350) and 97.2% (343) of all EBMs received personal payments 3 years before and in the year of their board membership. A total of $70,796,014 were made to the EBMs over the 5 years. The median 5-year combined personal payments per EBM was $150,849 (interquartile range [IQR]: $73,412-$282,456). EBMs who were chairman or vice chairman of executive board received significantly larger median personal payments than those who were not ($225,685 vs. $143,885, p = 0.01 in the U test). Among the 15 societies, there were 12 (80.0%) societies with all (100%) EBMs receiving personal payments from the pharmaceutical companies. Although every society has their own conflicts of interest policy, none publicly discloses the financial relationships between pharmaceutical companies and their EBMs due to their privacy.
This study demonstrated that nearly all EBMs of 15 medical associations representing internal medicine subspecialties had substantial financial relationships with the pharmaceutical companies in Japan over the past 5 years.
制药公司向医生支付讲课或咨询等报酬。特别是，制药公司与专业医学协会领导人之间的财务关系是医学界关注的焦点。然而，在日本，人们对此知之甚少。
本研究旨在评估日本内科医学会下属 15 个医学协会的执行委员会委员（EBM）个人获得的薪酬规模和频率。
从每个协会的网页上收集了代表内科亚专业的 15 个医学协会的所有 EBM。从 2016 年至 2020 年，从属于日本制药商协会的制药公司中提取了支付给 EBM 的款项。我们对支付数据进行了描述性分析。
在确定的 353 名不同的 EBM 中，有 350 名（99.2%）在 5 年内从制药公司获得了一笔或多笔个人薪酬。99.2%（350 名）和 97.2%（343 名）的 EBM 在其任职前 3 年和任职当年都收到了个人薪酬。在 5 年内共向 EBM 支付了 70796014 美元。每位 EBM 5 年的个人薪酬中位数为 150849 美元（四分位距 [IQR]：73412-282456）。担任执行委员会主席或副主席的 EBM 收到的个人薪酬中位数明显高于未担任此职务的 EBM（U 检验，225685 美元 vs. 143885 美元，p=0.01）。在这 15 个协会中，有 12 个（80.0%）协会的所有 EBM 都从制药公司获得了个人薪酬。尽管每个协会都有自己的利益冲突政策，但由于隐私原因，他们都没有公开披露制药公司与其 EBM 之间的财务关系。
本研究表明，在过去 5 年内，代表日本内科亚专业的 15 个医学协会的几乎所有 EBM 都与制药公司存在大量的财务关系。
