Distribution of Industry Payments Among Medical Directors of Catheterization and Electrophysiology Laboratories From the Top 100 US Hospitals.

HEALTH CARE POLICY AND LAW Distribution of Industry Payments Among Medical Directors of Catheterization and Electrophysiology Laboratories From the Top 100 US Hospitals Medical directors of cardiac catheterization (CC) and electrophysiology (EP) laboratories play an important role in the selection of devices and medications available within hospital procedural areas. This may also influence the practice patterns of their colleagues. As such, payments made from industry to medical directors of CC and EP laboratories have the potential to create conflicts of interest (COIs). The National Academy of Medicine (previously the Institute of Medicine) defines a COI as an event where “an individual or institution has a secondary interest that creates a risk of undue influence on decisions or actions affecting a primary interest,”1(p26) and notes that any payment of $10 000 or more constitutes a significant COI.1 However, to our knowledge, the extent and nature of payments to laboratory directors from top-ranking institutions has not been described previously. The Open Payments Program (OPP) mandated that biomedical industry and group-purchasing organizations report payments to physicians and hospitals. Since August 2013, information about eligible payments has been made publicly available through the OPP website.2 We used OPP data to characterize patterns of industry payments to laboratory directors at premier cardiovascular hospitals in the United States.