Gender Disparity in Industry Relationships With Academic Interventional Radiology Physicians

Abstract

OBJECTIVE. Industry relationships drive technologic innovation in interventional radiology and offer opportunities for professional growth. Women are underrepresented in interventional radiology despite the growing recognition of the importance of diversity. This study characterized gender disparities in financial relationships between industry and academic interventional radiologists. MATERIALS AND METHODS. In this retrospective cross-sectional study, U.S. academic interventional radiology physicians and their academic ranks were identified by searching websites of practices with accredited interventional radiology fellowship programs. Publicly available databases were queried to collect each physician's gender, years since medical school graduation, h-index, academic rank, and industry payments in 2018. Wilcoxon and chi-square tests compared payments between genders. A general linear model assessed the impact of academic rank, years since graduation, gender, and h-index on payments. RESULTS. Of 842 academic interventional radiology physicians, 108 (13%) were women. A total $14,206,599.41 was received by 686 doctors (81%); only $147,975.28 (1%) was received by women. A lower percentage of women (74%) than men (83%) received payments (p = 0.04); median total payments were lower for women ($535) than men ($792) (p = 0.01). Academic rank, h-index, years since graduation, and male gender were independent predictors of higher payments. Industry payments supporting technologic advancement were made exclusively to men. CONCLUSION. Female interventional radiology physicians received fewer and lower industry payments, earning 1% of total payments despite constituting 13% of physicians. Gender independently predicted industry payments, regardless of h-index, academic rank, or years since graduation. Gender disparity in interventional radiology physician-industry relationships warrants further investigation and correction.

Keywords: Sunshine Act; conflict of interest; gender; industry payments; interventional radiology.

Fig 1 —

Gender composition by state. States with no academic IR fellowship programs are presented in white. The gender quota for each state was calculated by dividing the number of women by the number of men IR physicians in that state.

Fig 2 —

Total payments in 2018 to IR physicians. Total payments in 2018 are presented for each IR physician by h index (A) and by years since medical school graduation (B). Note that one outlier ($5,542,340.20 received by one male IR physician) was excluded for illustrative purposes.

Fig 2 —

Total payments in 2018 to IR physicians. Total payments in 2018 are presented for each IR physician by h index (A) and by years since medical school graduation (B). Note that one outlier ($5,542,340.20 received by one male IR physician) was excluded for illustrative purposes.

Fig 3 —

Total Payments in 2018 by academic rank. There are gender differences for the extreme values of industry payments (left) as well as in the quartiles/boxplots (right) for every academic rank. Middle bar denotes the median, boxes denote the 25th and 75th percentile, and whiskers denote the 5th—95th percentile.

Fig 4 —

Median total payments to men and women IR physicians over time (dashed line represents the interquartile range, i.e. 25^th—75^th quartile).