Michael Hart

Now, For Something New
June 24, 2008

Often at the annual meetings of industry associations with sizable numbers of exhibitors as members, the issues on people’s minds are much alike: Drayage, housing blocks, show hours and dates, and out-of-touch show managers.

Granted, all those came up at the Healthcare Convention & Exhibitors Assn. Annual Meeting & Exhibition wrapping up today in Salt Lake City … but there’s more. It’s what most in the health care meetings world perceive as the ever-tightening restrictions on how pharmaceutical and medical device makers can market their products to physicians and other health care professionals.

What seems to be the never-ending pressure to put restrictions on the marketing process is much like the ongoing escalation of gas prices we’re all experiencing: You can’t believe it could get any worse, but then it does.

For many, the PhRMA Code of several years ago seemed bad enough – and yet people adjusted. Now there is legislation pending in the U.S. Congress and several states that would limit or require complicated reporting of relatively small gifts to physicians. The impact on the showfloor is to make it very difficult to figure out how to get a doctor into your booth.

But wait, there’s more. A committee of the American Medical Assn. has recommended that physicians and health care institutions accept absolutely no financial support from the private sector for continuing medical education. Conceivably, it could mean the end of sponsors subsidizing educational tracks that provide doctors with the CEM credits they need to keep their medical licenses – along with the incentive to get them to the health care tradeshow in the first place.

This proposed recommendation is ever so slowly working its way through a long process at the AMA and may not see the light of day for another year. Even then, it’s only a recommendation, not a dictate. However, these are not lawyers we’re dealing with here, holding out the opportunity to split hairs. If the AMA winds up recommending something, you can believe pharmaceutical and medical device makers will adhere to it.

Where does that leave the average health care association that puts on an annual meeting for those in its specialty field? Probably charging attendees the full cost of all the programs they offer during the meeting-slash-tradeshow, potentially driving those onetime attendees to other methods of getting the continuing education they need and nowhere close to a tradeshow floor.

Posted by Michael Hart on June 24, 2008 | Comments (0)