ACCME Announces a Call for Feedback Regarding Review of the Independence and Integrity of CME

The Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) has announced a call for feedback to review the rules that protect the independence and integrity of accredited continuing medical education (CME) for healthcare professionals.

The call for feedback is in line with the ACCME’s strategic goal of assuring the quality of accreditation and is an attempt to be responsive to stakeholders who have identified potential improvements over the past several years.

The ACCME has convened the Task Force on Protecting the Integrity of Accredited CE to oversee the review process, with members representing diverse perspectives, including CE providers and the public. The task force will engage with stakeholders to identify new and existing challenges related to managing the complex issues of disclosure, conflicts of interest, and commercial support in a rapidly evolving healthcare environment. Stakeholders will be asked for recommendations about potential revisions to the ACCME Standards for Commercial Support: Standards to Ensure Independence in CME Activities that will ensure their continued relevance and effectiveness.

The ACCME is soliciting feedback from national and international stakeholders including: accredited CE providers, accreditors in the health professions, healthcare leaders, government agencies, commercial supporters, clinicians, patients, and the public. The ACCME will engage in dialogue with stakeholders at multiple forums, focus groups, and webinars.

To kick off this review process, the ACCME has opened a call for feedback and welcomes responses from all stakeholders through 5:00 PM CST on March 8, 2019.

Some of the more specific questions the Call for Feedback addresses are:

• What challenges you have seen that are related to the separation of accredited CME from commercial influence that you believe the ACCME should address?
• How can the ACCME modernize the requirements about the independence of accredited CME from commercial influence to reflect the changing healthcare environment?
• What challenges have you seen related to the identification and resolution of conflicts of interest in accredited CME that ACCME should address?
• How can the ACCME modernize the requirements about appropriate management of commercial support of accredited CME to reflect the changing healthcare environment?
• What challenges have you seen related to accredited CME content and format without commercial bias that the ACCME should address?
• How should the ACCME modernize the requirements about disclosures relevant to potential commercial bias in accredited CME to reflect the changing healthcare environment?

An information packet, with the Standards and related policies, as well as the survey questions, can be found here.