Courtesy FCG Institute
On Monday, we called for the ACCME to publish the ACCME Annual Report for 2007, the report showed up and these are the results:
The overall size of the CME enterprise has grown by 6.5% in total income, 5.4% in physician participants and 20.8% in number of CME Activities.
Despite the increase in the overall size of CME, Commercial Support was only increased by 1.0%, and commerical support has not grown by any significant rate since 2003.
Commercial Support to Publishing/Education Companies was reduced by -$26.2 million or – 4.2%, Hospital/Healthcare systems by -$10.5 million, -18% and Schools of Medicine by -$13.2 million or- 5.1%.
Commercial Support for Medical Specialty Societies increased by $35.4 million or 18% and non profits increased to $28.9 million or 54.8%.
This information shows a trend that with the exception of non-profits commercial support overall is diminishing and that other sources of income for CME providers are slowly being developed.
CME drew in an additional 1 million participants of which 445,000 were physicians.
Commercially supported CME though less as a percent of total buget in 2007, contributes to the training of a large number of physicians and allied health professionals; let’s hope the ACCME and others continue to recognize this important point.