The Relationship between Industry Payments on Research Productivity and Career Success of Academic Radiation Oncologists

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Radiation oncology is a specialty that treats 60% of all cancer patients but receives only 1.6% of total National Institutes of Health funding for cancer research. Industry support to academic radiation oncologists may represent an opportunity to undertake research and enable them to progress their careers, though it also represents potential financial conflict of interest. The Physician Payments Sunshine Act in 2010 required industry funding of physicians to be reported, now enabling assessment of the effects of industry funding on physician productivity in radiation oncology. The goal of this paper is to investigate whether there is a correlation between industry payments and physician productivity and success, as defined by total publications, h-index, or academic rank, for academic radiation oncologists. This study examined the relationship between industry payments, research productivity, and academic title in academic radiation oncologists. Academic radiation oncologists were identified from institutions with residency programs. Industry payments data was obtained from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Open Payment database, and bibliometric data was obtained from Scopus. Sixty-Six percent of academic radiation oncologists received industry payments. The annual mean general payments to Professors, Associate Professors, Assistant Professors, and Instructors were $3,626, $1,293, $622, and $217 respectively. The annual mean research payments were $15,813, $7,022, $1,616, and $293 respectively. Our analysis revealed a significant direct correlation between industry funding and H-index for associate professors, assistant professors, and clinicians/other, but this relationship was not significant for professors and instructors. While univariate analysis revealed both general and research payments were significantly associated with H-index, this association was insignificant for general payments when controlling for academic rank, region, degrees, research payments, and gender. The multivariate model showed that an increase in $10,000 annually in research payments was associated with a 1.19-times increase in odds to be in the top quartile of publications and a 1.10-times increase in odds to be in the top quartile of h-index. Most academic radiation oncologists receive industry funding. Increased research productivity is significantly associated with increased academic rank and research-specific industry payments, but not general industry payments. No conclusions can be made regarding the causal relationship between industry payments and research productivity.