Does Academic Productivity Correlate With Industry Payments in Hand Surgery Fellowship Programs in the United States?

Hand surgeons and the industry share a common goal to improve the care of patients. However, industry support remains controversial, and the current relationship with fellowship programs remains unclear. This study explores the relationship between industry support and research productivity among hand surgeons in the academic setting.

The Open Payments database, created by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as a result of the Sunshine Act, was used to identify supplemental income paid to physicians of hand surgery fellowships in the United States. Both lifetime individual physician and aggregated fellowship Sunshine Act supplemental income (2015-2021) were collected for review. Supplemental income only reflects royalties, consulting fees, or food and does not include direct research funding. H-index was collected through the Scopus website as a proxy for academic productivity.

Six hundred and thirty-four faculty physicians (90.8%) from 94 hand surgery fellowships (100%) were included in the study. The mean individual physician lifetime supplemental income was $67,272 (median $341,861), whereas the mean individual physician H-index was 12.5 (median 9.0). There was a significant and weak positive correlation between individual physician H-index and lifetime income (p<0.001). Similarly, there was a significant and moderately positive correlation between the combined fellowship H-index and total lifetime income (p<0.001).

Research productivity of an orthopedic hand fellowship group and individual academic hand surgeon correlate with overall industry support from indirect research funding. Further work is required to better understand the advantages and disadvantages of industry support of academically productive hand surgeons at hand surgery fellowships.