Gender Disparities in Medical Industry Payments

Abstract

To the Editor Sullivan and colleagues 1 showed that male physicians received far larger medical industry compensations than female physicians possibly due to the so-called glass ceiling effect. We have 3 comments.First, we are interested in how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the male-female disparity of industry compensations. Sullivan and colleagues 1 analyzed data from the Open Payments Database only through 2019, but it is already possible to obtain data through 2021 as we did. 2 Notably, during the pandemic, academic performance has been more devastating among women than men, and to analyze whether similar disproportionate impacts exist in the medical industry compensations is of interest after 2020.Second, it would be meaningful to reveal the breakdown of the industry compensations in this study. While a malefemale disparity of the compensation was increasingly exacerbated as the position got higher and as the year progressed, the factors that affected such a difference were not well investigated. A detailed breakdown of industry compensations may shed some light on this matter. For example, it has been pointed out that consulting, traveling, and lodging may be received more by those with higher positions. 3 Furthermore, speaking engagements have been noted to be related to promotion and have been shown to be lower among female physicians. 4 Third, it is unfortunate that there was a lack of discussion regarding a negative impact of financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies on practice and research. Not only Sullivan and colleagues 1 but also the accompanying Invited Commentary discussed that a disproportionately low acceptance of the compensations among women should be justified. However, industry compensations are the primary source of financial conflict of interest in medical society, and the fact that female physicians received fewer compensations should not always be considered negative. Namely, it is possible that