Financial conflicts of interest between pharmaceutical companies and executive board members of internal medicine subspecialty societies in Japan between 2016 and 2020

Abstract

Rationale: 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.

Aims and objectives: 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.

Method: 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.

Results: 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.

Conclusion: 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.

Keywords: conflict of interest; internal medicine; medical associations; professional medical association; professionalism.