Pfizer Halts Some CME Funding
-- Tradeshow Week, 7/22/2008 11:05:00 AM
Pfizer, one of the largest pharmaceutical makers in the world, has stopped funding commercial continuing medical education (CME) providers. While the company will continue to give grants to programs associated with teaching hospitals, medical societies and non-profit groups, it will no longer provide sponsorships or other types of funding to for-profit health care show organizers or other kinds of profit-driven medical education providers.
“Some of the companies that are simply in the business of putting on continuing medical education programs have come under scrutiny,” said Mike Saxton, senior director and team leader of Pfizer’s medical education group. “Kind of as a side consequence, drug companies who use them have also come under scrutiny.”
As a result, the pharmaceutical company eliminated all direct funding for CME programs provided by medical education and communication companies.
Among the highest-profile companies to be affected is Pri-Med, which organizes seven health care-related tradeshows each year around the United States and nearly 70 smaller conferences where it provides CME for health care professionals.
“Right,” Saxton said, “Pri-Med is no longer eligible.”
He added that organizations still eligible for Pfizer’s funding are those whose No. 1 goal is treating patients. However, those primarily driven by the profit motive are not.
“There’s nothing wrong with those organizations,” Saxton said. “We’re just not going to support them. Is it an organization that has a patient-centered, mission-driven focus? Yes, we will.”
Pri-Med officials responded by saying they believed physicians were equipped themselves to determine whether there was a conflict of interest with their continuing medical education providers.
In a letter signed by Pri-Med President and CEO John M. Connolly and Chief Compliance Officer Marissa Seligman, they stated, “Pri-Med does not believe that eliminating support for medical education companies will result in strong mitigation of conflict of interest within continuing medical education.”
Saxton said Pfizer was talking with officials from Pri-Med and other for-profit medical education providers in hopes it could encourage them to partner with organizations that would qualify for its funding.
