Michael Hart

Pity the Poor Medical Show Organizer

You’ve got to sympathize with the position Eric Allen finds himself in. As executive vice president and head of the Healthcare Convention & Exhibitors Assn., he is busy herding cats of several different colors – all because of what appears to be an unrelenting drive toward the ultimate separation of church and state in the world of health care marketing.

The latest challenge is a commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. that calls on professional medical associations to stop taking money from pharmaceutical and medical device firms, the traditional funding sources for much of the continuing medical education at their conventions and meetings.

This follows on the heels of a revision of the PhRMA Code that went into effect at the beginning of this year, the successful passage of legislation in Massachusetts that puts limits on how private-sector firms can market their products to physicians and other health care professionals (similar legislation recently passed in Iowa) and the reintroduction of a bill in the U.S. Senate that would make companies report any gifts they give to doctors totaling more than $100 a year.

Still, even in this context, the JAMA article was serious.

As Allen pointed out to me the other day, at this point JAMA is only making suggestions. But, if a critical mass of the professional groups takes the suggestions, Allen said, “The whole revenue model many of these societies are based on would have to change.”

Allen runs a group that is a mix of health care show organizers and exhibiting companies. You could make the argument that all the societies, many of which use their annual conventions and tradeshows to fund the services they provide their members (including CME), have to do is say no. They could say, “We already do a good job of policing our showfloor,” and work to maintain the status quo.

Then there’s that other segment of HCEA, the pharmaceutical and medical device makers who historically have spent millions each year on tradeshow exhibiting. The pressure on them for change is coming from so many sources – the government, the public, their stockholders, the media – that some are tempted to (and a few have told Tradeshow Week they will) just throw their hands up and cease their participation in tradeshows all together.

And all Allen has to do is make sense of all this, provide some direction and please each of his various constituencies.

From my vantage point as a mere observer, it looks as if everybody on every side in the health care show sector is standing on a cliff waiting to see if anybody else is going to jump – because they don’t want to be the ones who go first.

So, like I said at the beginning: Everybody in the tradeshow industry today has problems. But then again, you could be Eric Allen …

Posted by Michael Hart on April 15, 2009 | Comments (2)