Last week we reported that Pfizer ended commercial support of CME to Medical Communication Companies: Pfizer to eliminate CME Grants to MECC’s.
Since that time there have been several organizations responding to Pfizer’s announcement; North American Association of Medical Education and Communication Companies (NAAMECC) NAAMECC Statement and the Coalition for Health Care Communication Coalition Statement.
Here are some key points of this communications:
Pfizer’s decision is not based on facts.
Medical Education Companies are more not less compliant to ACCME Standards for commercial support and other regulations, according to the ACCME’s 2006 Accreditation and Compliance Report.
Independent providers should be praised, not shunned for their role in improving patient care.
Commercial CME providers bring innovation to the educational process, including areas like multi-media, needs assessments, outcomes and program design.
Conflicts of Interest can be best managed by full disclosure, robust reporting and transparency to the learner.
If Pfizer thinks that MECC’s are not worthy of funding, why would a medical association or University Medical Center, which is where Pfizer wants’ them to go as “joint sponsors or sub contractors”.
This move could have serious negative implications for the entire pharmaceutical and device manufacturing segments. By segmenting out differences in “commercial speech” they are leaving themselves and other companies open to lawsuits that they would normally defend on the grounds of “Freedom of Speech”, i.e. if Pfizer can segment this out, why can’t we segment out Pfizer’s other speech.
Pfizer’s comments on the reasoning behind this move, is to prevent “commissioned salesman” (medical meetings magazine) running counter to their own business practices.
Pfizer’s list of “preferred providers” lists only direct customers, the employ prescribers, oversee formulary and guidelines. How is this move going to help keep the legislators and regulators feeling good about this?
A personal commentary:
Pfizer naming communications companies as bias is “kind of ridiculous”. I am at a baseball camp this week with several entrepreneurs (apparently entrepreneurs are hands on with everything, even their children). I discussed the situation and they all laughed: you are “bias” to Pfizer, give me a break.
It is impossible to separate out one type of deliverer of a message from another as somehow less bias if the message is basically the same.
I think it is ironic that Pfizer keeps referring to their University of Wisconsin Smoking Cessation initiative, this is CME for a product with marginal efficacy and serious side effects, which had even as late as two weeks ago been questioned by the press (Doctors Under the Influence?).
Entrepreneurs care, they are more motivated than big institutions to do a good job. We recently had one of the top University CME directors and a chapter writer for the Macy Foundation report visit our company and he commented that most University Departments have been decimated. He wished that his staff had just some of the enthusiasm for education that our staff had.
For a commercial enterprise like Pfizer to say that education should only come from Universities is outrageous, large corporations and governments (state and federal) relay heavily on commercial education companies for staff training and education in general. This statement is the equivalent of the US Army or Navy saying we want only Universities or disinterested third parties to train the army. In some ways we are training an “army” of physicians and to exclude one type of provider is ludicrous.
This type of communication to the public is not helpful for future, as we pointed out last week. Pfizer had basically stopped funding MECC’s, unless they are facing some type of “unknown” prosecution for the CME practices. It just doesn’t make any sense to make an announcement like this at this time.
More than likely this has been one person at Pfizer’s agenda (they have been saying so at CME conferences for years), this person has some how used the current regulatory environment to bolster their case. This person has good intentions of making CME stronger, but if this is the case, what a bag of goods they have been sold.
We have polled many other companies and none seam interested in following the lead of Pfizer on this one, desiring to support CME from as many stakeholders as possible.
Key Documents:
Wall Street Journal Pfizer Ends Direct Funding of Courses
CNN Money Pfizer Ends Direct Funding of Courses
Medical Meetings “Pfizer Cuts off Medical Education Companies”
Medical Marketing and Media Pfizer sacks commercial support of CME