Summary of non-research payments to board-certified allergists
Between 2016 and 2020, 2,398 of the 3,943 board-certified allergists
(60.8%) received at least one non-research payment for lecturing,
consulting, and drafting from pharmaceutical companies, as detailed in
Table 1. The total number of payments amounted to 30,849, with an
aggregate value of $43,385,284, distributed by 84 different
pharmaceutical entities over the five years. Lecturing payments
constituted the majority of this sum, exceeding $37.2 million (85.7%
of the total payment amounts), followed by consulting at $4.3 million
(9.9%) and drafting at $1.9 million (4.3%). There was large gap
between mean and median payment amounts. For allergists who received at
least one payment, the median amount per allergist was $3,106
(interquartile range [IQR]: $966 – $12,124), in contrast to a
mean of $18,092 (standard deviation [SD]: $49,233) over the
five-year span. The Gini index, used to measure payment distribution
among allergists, was 0.874, suggesting that a small proportion of
allergists received the majority of non-research payments over the five
years. Specifically, the top 1%, 5%, and 10% of these allergists
accounted for 20.8%, 52.8%, and 68.8% of all non-research payments,
respectively (Figure 1).