The Alliance for Continuing Medical Education (Alliance) is an international membership organization of more than 2,600 professionals devoted to designing and implementing continuing medical education (CME) activities for physicians.
The Alliance responded to the ACCME’s calls for comment. In their response it is clear, that the ACCME should go back to the drawing board.
· The Alliance does not support the concept that commercial supporters should be restricted from being allowed to communicate topics for which they are willing to provide support.
· We ask ACCME to clarify the definition of "internal criteria." If, by "internal criteria" ACCME means that the commercial interests cannot provide an application form that includes information used by the commercial supporter to evaluate the request for funding, we would not support this statement.
· The Alliance does not support the ACCME proposal to eliminate commercial support of certified continuing medical education. There is currently no evidence available to suggest that commercial support increases or decreases bias in educational programming or negatively impacts physician decision making after attending a certified CME activity.
· The ACCME has also asked for comment with regard to a possible new paradigm for commercial support. After reviewing the proposed new paradigm, we believe the model offered is unnecessarily burdensome and will, by default, preclude most providers from qualifying for commercial support.
- On the proposal to ban persons paid to create, or present, promotional materials on behalf of commercial interests cannot control the content of accredited continuing medical education on the same content.
The Alliance considers this a very important statement that should be openly debated. We have serious concerns with this proposed policy. Industry upholds contracts with subject matter experts to present information about their products and services. These presentations may include education on the clinical benefits and safety considerations for a marketed pharmaceutical product or device. Many times, the researchers who have conducted the clinical trials which investigated the safe and effective uses of the product are then called upon to discuss their findings in a promotional setting. This is all acceptable under the regulations set forth primarily by the Food and Drug Administration.
The Alliance which represents most of the CME professionals around the country, the opinion is clear: ACCME the real need is more diligence applied to current rules not necessarily new rules.