Overall and per-otorhinolaryngologist payments
At the time of this study, we identified 8,190 otorhinolaryngologists board certified by the JSO-HNS. Of the 8,190 otorhinolaryngologists, 3,667 (44.8 %) were paid a total of $13,873,562, entailing 22,076 contracts in payments for lecturing, consulting, and writing by 72 pharmaceutical companies between 2016 and 2019. (Table 1) Median payments per physician were $0 (interquartile range [IQR]: $0 – $851) for overall otorhinolaryngologists. For otorhinolaryngologists receiving payments, median payments per physician was $1,022 (IQR: $473–$2,526), while average payments were $3,783 (standard deviation [SD]: $14,349). The median payment contracts and number of companies making payments per physician were 3.0 (IQR: 1.0–6.0) and 2.0 (IQR: 1.0–4.0) over the four years, respectively. One otorhinolaryngologist received a maximum payment of $490,081 and 332 payment contracts.
Table 1. Summary of personal payments from pharmaceutical companies to board-certified otorhinolaryngologists between 2016 and 2019