Improving financial disclosures in oncology.

Abstract

e18642 Background: The Physician Payments Sunshine Act, as part of the Affordable Care Act, was enacted in 2010 to improve transparency of payments from drug and medical device manufacturers to physicians, which are easily accessible in a public database (OpenPayments CMS). However, in a review conducted of clinical drug trials in oncology, one-third of oncologist authors did not disclose their industry payments. Failure to disclose financial conflicts of interest can lead to a loss of public trust and in some cases may lead to legal liability. The American Society for Clinical Oncology and our institutional polices require all faculty to fully report financial conflicts of interest (COI). This pilot project aims to evaluate the accuracy of financial COI disclosures among our oncologists at the University of Chicago, and improve subsequent disclosures. Methods: This project was approved through the institutional quality improvement process. In May 2020, we crossmatched COI disclosures on journal publications for 37 practicing clinical hematologists/oncologists in our institution with 2017 and 2018 records on OpenPayments. We then conducted a department-wide Grand Rounds to review omissions, and to remind faculty of ASCO and University COI policies. In addition, we privately contacted individual oncologists to review any COI omissions. We reminded faculty that at the end of 2020 we would again review the accuracy of their disclosures. Results: We examined a total of 37 practicing hematologists/oncologists’ disclosure forms. At initial review, 6/37 (16.2%) of oncologists had incomplete or missing disclosures. A total of $569,182.95 in payments was not disclosed in 2018. 2 of these 6 oncologists did not disclose relevant payments from pharmaceutical companies whose drugs were referred to in publications. Several disclosure errors appeared to be inadvertent omissions as they were disclosed in other publications. Reasons given for disclosure omissions were: “oversight”, “did not believe to be relevant to publication”, “confusion over journal COI policies”, “unnecessary due to low payment amount”, too many journals to update disclosures in . At the final review, only 2 of the 6 oncologists with disclosure omissions had updated disclosures at the end of the year despite education provided at multiple grand rounds and private communications. Conclusions: This pilot project demonstrated that education sessions and individual feedback improved adherence to COI disclosure policies, but not fully. Additional feedback and enforcement mechanisms may be required for full compliance. In addition, a centralized disclosure form (such as ASCO’s disclosure form) that journals can easily access may improve disclosure adherence.