Discordance of Conflict-of-Interest Self-Disclosure and the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services

Abstract Background The Open Payments Database (OPD) discloses financial transactions between manufacturers and physicians. The concordance of OPD- versus self-reported COI is unknown. Materials and Methods Our objectives were to compare 1) industry and self-disclosed COI in clinical literature, 2) payments within each disclosure level, and 3) industry- and self-disclosed COI and payments by specialty. This was an observational study. PubMed was searched for clinical studies accepted for publication from 1/2014 to 6/2016. Author and OPD-disclosed COI were compared. Articles and authors were divided into Full Disclosure; Incomplete Industry Disclosure; Incomplete Self-Disclosure; and No COI. Primary outcome (differences in reported COI per manuscript) was assessed using McNemar’s test. Payment differences were compared using Kruskal-Wallis Test. Results OPD- and self-disclosed COI differed (65.0% discordance rate by manuscript, p