Another CME Funding Threat on Horizon

Michael Hart -- Tradeshow Week, 7/8/2008 3:09:00 PM

The organization providing accreditation for most health care continuing education programs is looking for comments on what many in the tradeshow industry think could be a serious development: The elimination of financial support for all CME programs.

The Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education is giving anybody who has an opinion on the issue until Aug. 11 to submit comments.

ACCME officials began to consider the issue a year and a half ago and, in March, they issued a proposed policy statement of their “belief that due consideration be given to the elimination of commercial support of continuing medical education.”

While many who organize and exhibit in health care tradeshows are concerned about the impact some final decree from ACCME could have on them, Healthcare Convention & Exhibitors Assn. Executive Vice President Eric Allen said the worst part of the process right now is how little is known about the eventual practical effect.

“It certainly has the potential to be very serious,” Allen said. “The question now is, ‘what does it mean?’”

ACCME spokeswoman Linda Stepanich said, “Transparency is the most important thing here.”

After its initial statement of the proposal to eliminate all commercial support for CME, the accreditation council opened the comment period, noting in a statement, “The debate should not go on without a discussion of alternatives, as nothing would be worse than the deconstruction of a system without the identification of alternatives.”

While the issue has yet to be decided, Stepanich said, it may end up that, for instance, speakers or instructors in CME programs would merely have to identify their interest in the topic being covered.

However, she added, “At this point, who knows where everything will go, and what’s going to happen?”

Meanwhile, the ACCME proposal gives health care marketing executives one more thing to worry about. The American Medical Assn. is considering a similar policy statement on CME, and the U.S. Congress and multiple state legislatures are reviewing (or have passed) bills limiting gifts to health care professionals.

“It has just been a cascading series of these kinds of things,” Allen said.

To comment on the ACCME proposal, go to https://accme.wufoo.com/forms/call-for-comment-2/.